Tuesday 23 June 2015

Uprooting Ernie - Pamela Burford

Uprooting Ernie Pamela Burford
While I'm all for serious books, when I'm in the mood, what I really love is a book that's lots of fun and can bring a smile to your face. A little while ago, I read a book that claimed to be a humorous, murder mystery. Sadly it wasn't very funny (it tried too hard) and the mystery part was quite lacking too.

Fortunately there are authors out there who can produce fun, funny books that also have a good mystery to try and solve. One of these authors is Pamela Burford.

I haven't reviewed any of her other books on here (yet) although I have read quite a few now. Most of her novels fall into the Romance or Romantic Suspense genre, but this fairly new series, the Jane Delaney mysteries are that, mystery stories. I was really lucky to get my hands on a pre-release copy to read and review (which I already have done on Amazon, Goodreads, and now here) before it was released on the 18th.

This is the second in the series, which stars Jane Delaney, also known as the Death Diva, and her poodle Sexy Beast. Jane is known as the Death Diva because of her unusual job, she does things for and to dead people, from visiting people's graves to deliver flowers, to stealing broaches from a corpse (in the first book, although she does say she'll never do that again) to giving a grave a 'drink' of cheap rose from a box. Along the way she becomes involved in some mysterious circumstances, and a once a dead body arrives on the scene, there's a mystery to solve.

The book is great fun and Jane's character is a great creation. She also has her ex-husband to deal with, who she's still sort of hung up on, and the very lovely Martin, or the Padre as she calls him. (If you want to know why, then read the first book, actually, read the first book anyway, it's good.) Both of whom more or less invade her life, for a while at least, on a day to day basis in this book. (Poor thing, two men after her.)

I didn't guess who-done-it until it was pretty much explained at the end of the book, which is usually a good sign, and it all made sense (an even better sign,) the mystery side of it certainly worked for me. I'm not sure if all the clues were there to work it out, I was too involved in the story to have done some kind of 'clue audit' but either way, it worked and I enjoyed it. I might try and read again at some point to see if I can spot the hints that point in the right direction.

I read the first book in the series, Undertaking Irene, last year when it came out, and I've been waiting for book two since. This is of course the main problem with books like this, when you discover the series in the early stages, you have to wait for the next one to come out. This was a great read, which I didn't want to put down, so I read it far too quickly, (greedy reading again) and now I've got to wait for book three...

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