Stuff to Die For
A James Lessor and Skip Moore Mystery
Don Bruns
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-933515-10-4 (1933515104)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-10-6 (9781933515106)
Publication Date: September 2007
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Best friends James Lessor and Skip Moore are hardly on
the fast track. While James works as a line cook at Cap'n Crab, Skip
spends his days selling—or rather, attempting to
sell—security systems to people who (a) have no money, and (b)
have nothing they care to protect.
James and Skip aren't upwardly mobile, but they're about to get
literally mobile when James spends a surprise inheritance on a white
box truck. An investment in the future, he surmises, as these two are
starting a business—solely devoted to hauling other people's
stuff.
But the fledgling business takes a shocking turn when James and Skip
unload the contents of their first moving job and find some unexpected
cargo—a bloody human finger.
James and Skip must scramble to stay one step ahead of the perpetrators
of the gruesome crime in this witty, gritty mystery about big dreams,
big ideas—and big trouble.
Instead of chasing the American dream, James and Skip will be running for their lives.
Review:
Don Bruns, author of the Mick Sever rock-and-roll mysteries, introduces
a new series featuring James Lessor and Skip Moore, two underemployed
best friends and roommates living in south Florida, in Stuff to Die For, a comedy-buddy-mystery that for the most part works on all three levels.
It sounded like a good idea at the time. Skip (who narrates the story)
and James decide to get into the hauling business. Everybody's got
stuff they need to move and they (mostly James) think what with a
little luck and hard work they can parlay their newly acquired box
truck into a fleet in a few years. Never mind that neither one knows
how to back up a truck without damaging something. Their first job
comes via a reference: their friend Emily knows a woman who's going
through a divorce and wants her husband's stuff hauled away. Seems easy
enough, until while putting the stuff into storage, they discover a
human finger with a class ring attached bearing the name of same school
and graduating year as Skip and James. Maybe this plan of hauling other
people's stuff wasn't such a good idea after all.
The plot gets a little complicated at this point. The finger belongs to
the class jock, Vic Maitlin, who, unbeknownst to but a few, saved
Skip's life in high school. Consequently, Skip feels obligated to find
out what transpired to cause Vic's finger to be in his possession. He
and James end up getting hired to locate Vic by his father, an investor
who is mixed up with a group of Cuban exiles plotting an invasion of
their homeland. This all could have ended up being rather silly, or
worse seriously dull, but Bruns handles it reasonably well, keeping the
plot moving briskly forward, avoiding (with one notable exception)
tangential plot points that would detract from the story, and
instilling the characters with endearing qualities. The one exception
is the incongruent subplot involving Emily's pregnancy that serves no
relevant purpose being in this book.
Stuff to Die For doesn't
pretend to be more than it is, escapist fun in the form of a generally
entertaining mystery. If for that reason alone, it deserves
considerable credit.
Special thanks to Maryglenn McCombs Book Publicity for providing a copy of Stuff to Die For for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
Stuff to Die For
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover), September 2007
ISBN-10: 1-933515-10-4 (1933515104)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-10-6 (9781933515106)
Omnimystery keywords for Stuff to Die For ...
Location(s) referenced: Miami.