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WHEN YOU FIND YOUR BOSS PUSHING UP DAISIES. . .
Life in full bloom, landscape designer, Paige Turner, scores her first landscaping contract to spruce up the park, her radio talk show shoots to number one, and her retail shop is simply blossoming. Yes, her life is a bed of roses. Until she finds City Manager, Bud Picklemann served up on the blade of her favorite shovel mere hours after she’s threatened to have his head on a platter, then the thorns come out. And there is none thornier than the local police chief declaring Paige the one and only suspect and threatening to plow her under.
YOU’VE GOT TO FORMULATE A PLANT OF ATTACK . . .
Paige teams up with dashing attorney, Adam Hayes to weed through the list of suspects, and clear her soiled reputation. A bigmouthed Parrot who often spouts Mr. T-isms, and a giant pickle mascot join in quirky Paige’s quest to once again cultivate control of her life. WHEN YOU FIND YOUR BOSS PUSHING UP DAISIES. . .
Life in full bloom, landscape designer, Paige Turner, scores her first landscaping contract to spruce up the park, her radio talk show shoots to number one, and her retail shop is simply blossoming. Yes, her life is a bed of roses. Until she finds City Manager, Bud Picklemann served up on the blade of her favorite shovel mere hours after she’s threatened to have his head on a platter, then the thorns come out. And there is none thornier than the local police chief declaring Paige the one and only suspect and threatening to plow her under.
YOU’VE GOT TO FORMULATE A PLANT OF ATTACK . . .
Paige teams up with dashing attorney, Adam Hayes to weed through the list of suspects, and clear her soiled reputation. A bigmouthed Parrot who often spouts Mr. T-isms, and a giant pickle mascot join in quirky Paige’s quest to once again cultivate control of her life.
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Going against popular opinion on this one My first exposure to the Hometown Mystery series was Advent of a Mystery by Marilyn Leach which is Christmas-themed and WONDERFUL. I felt like I had found an undiscovered gem in that one, so I immediately looked for other books in the series. While this is considered a series, each book has a different author so there is more than the usual variability between books and this latest read wasn’t as nearly good as my first selection.In this offering, our main character is Paige Turner (say the name out loud to fully catch the “funny” in the name) who has returned to Serendipity, Oregon to start her own landscaping/nursery business. She is also the host of a local radio show on gardening which provides quite a bit of material for the book. Paige grew up in Serendipity but moved away after high school and has been back in town for about a year. She has been hired by the City Council to revamp the play area in the local park prior to the Pickle Festival and ends up discovering a body in a pile of mulch. The local police are quick to accuse Paige of the murder and she spends the rest of the novel trying to clear her name by discovering who the real killer is.I have to be very honest and say that this isn’t a particularly good cozy.1) The reason that the police accuse Paige is pretty flimsy (she offended the officer’s wife in high school by going to prom with the guy she wanted to go with – really ???).2) The town treats her like an outsider and is hostile to this newcomer even though she grew up there and has been back for a year.3) There is a bribery theme that doesn’t hold water (the payoff amounts to keep people quiet is larger than the amount gained by the “villain”).4) Each chapter starts with an exchange with a caller into the radio show. What starts out as humorous early on gets old quickly and gets sillier and sillier as the novel progresses. I actually rolled my eyes at one point (really).5) There are way too many characters introduced and character development is virtually non-existant.My first gut reaction was to give this 3-stars but after seeing this all in black and white, I realized that didn’t accurately reflect my opinion of the book. I did finish it, but it just wasn’t good and I hold a different opinion from other reviewers. There are much better mysteries out there than this – Tea Shop series by Laura Childs and the Coffee House mysteries by Cleo Coyle to name a couple and the previously mentioned Advent of a Mystery. Very disappointed.(I did receive a free e-book copy furnished by Barbour Publishing through NetGalley. There was no other compensation and no requirement of a positive review – as you can tell.)
Don’t Want to Miss This Highly Entertaining Cozy Mystery This is the first book by Susan Sleeman that I’ve read, and you can bet it won’t be the last. The author had me in the first paragraph. With a heroine name like Paige Turner, I knew it would be a book of quirky characters, and I was not disappointed. We get glimpses of Paige’s crazy radio program, Through the Garden Gate, throughout the book, where callers with names such as Weed Whacker, Bamboozled, Chirpy, and Fit to be Tied, phoned in gardening dilemmas for Paige to solve. The humorous exchanges will have you laughing out loud. Paige had been awarded her first landscaping contract, renovating the local park in preparation for the town’s annual Pickle Fest. However, the city manager, Bud Pickelmann seems to have it in for her, and was not going to make it easy for her. The day after an altercation with Bud in the park, Paige finds his lifeless body stowed on her job under a pile of mulch. The story turns into a real, honest-to-goodness whodunnit. Police chief, Mitch Lawson, who has carried a grudge against her since childhood, quickly determines that Paige must be the perpetrator, but without sufficient evidence, he cannot arrest her–yet. Faced with probable incarceration within days, Paige has no choice but to become her own investigator.With her attitude of self-sufficiency and driven to clear her good name, she goes about town gathering information about who would have a motive to murder Bud Pickelmann. The city manager is a known wheeler-dealer, whose self-satisfying incentive is money. It soon becomes apparent that there are many people who may have a motive to extinguish this intolerable man, but who has the capacity to kill?Enter good-looking Christian lawyer, Adam Hayes, who agrees to represent her. Adam is tempted to cross the attorney-client line and pursue a personal relationship with Paige, but he is too much of an ethical professional and gentleman to go there, much to Paige’s dismay. Refusing to accept Adam’s help as a private investigator, Paige comes uncomfortably close to impending arrest until she uncovers an unexpected clue– and danger. This book is full of humor and suspense, with a subtle Christian message. I highly recommend it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going out to find another Susan Sleeman book.
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