Deadly
Charm
An
Amanda Bell Brown Mystery
Claudia Mair Burney
Howard
Books (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5195-6 (1416551956)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5195-9 (9781416551959)
Publication Date: March 2009
List Price: $13.99
Synopsis (from the publisher): When the ominous Thunders roll into Dr. Amanda Bell Brown’s town, the sassy sleuth sees a storm brewing. Disgraced playboy preacher Ezekiel Thunder and his seductive first lady, Nikki, are on the comeback trail, but Bell is less than charmed by the pair. When their toddler, Baby Zeekie, is found dead from an accidental drowning, forensic psychologist Bell suspects foul play in the fatal family, especially after the mama in mourning flirts with Bell’s estranged husband, Jazz. Bell is sickened by the woman’s behavior and the thought of someone murdering an innocent child – or is it morning sickness that’s plaguing her? Between babies and bodies, she pushes past the limits to discover the deadly truth.
Review:
With some passages that read like rap, and others like scripture,
Claudia Mair Burney’s Deadly
Charm
has an enchantment all its own. The third in Burney’s Amanda
Bell Brown series, the mystery in this one is as much about whether
forensic psychologist Bell and her Detroit PD detective husband, Jazz,
will remain an inter-racial twosome, and what “the egg size
growth in [her] lower abdomen” is, as it is about what
happened during the drowning of three-year-old Zeekie Thunder, the
youngest child of charismatic but lecherous preaching personality,
sixtyish Ezekiel Thunder and his early twenties wife, Nikki, with eyes
for Jazz. The thirty-five-year-old Bell narrates the story in a breezy,
colloquial style and with clip along dialogue that propels the reader
towards the novel’s conclusion and past a couple of
questionable turns in the plot.
For Bell “there’s lostsa splainin’ to
do” as she discusses her convoluted three-way relationship
between herself and ex-boyfriend, a 28-year-old white preacher and
community activist named, Rocky, and her estranged husband. Then,
there’s her revelation of an even earlier failed marriage and
a miscarriage, and as the story progresses there are background checks
that reveal a trail of the deaths under mysterious circumstances of
other peoples’ ex-partners and former children.
There’s also the rationale for preacher Thunder’s
philandering, Jazz’s bouts with the bottle, a broken promise
to raise young Zeekie from the dead, and the cause for the cases of
gastroenteritis that almost spell lights out for both Bell and Jazz
before they nail the psychopathic perpetrator.
Although the setting is often at Rocky’s Rock House church
where serious undertakings occur, there is humour there, too, when Bell
is accosted by a demented Sister Lou demanding Bell be exorcised, a
performance that embarrasses Bell when it hits national television. Lou
is the same “Sistah” who wants to exorcise
Jazz’s sexual demons, and was present with Ezekiel
Thunder’s older children, 12-year-old Zeke and 15-year-old
Zekia, when toddler Zeekie died. Bell’s Ann Arbor pad is
aptly described as her “little slice of paradise: shabby chic
meets paradise,” and she perceives Jazz’s self
image as “an angry man with a black heart and a haunted
mind” while he, in turn, sees
“Blondilocks” Rocky as a “blond boy
toy” and Bell as a wannabe “Columbo.”
Readers of Christian literature will appreciate the various religious
references that are woven into the story in an unobtrusive but
convincing way, and everyone will appreciate having a pleasantly
entertaining read.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Deadly Charm and to Simon & Schuster for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read Deadly Charm? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Murder, Mayhem and a Fine Man
Howard Books (Trade Paperback), January 2008
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5194-8 (1416551948)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5194-2 (9781416551942)
Deadly
Charm
Howard Books (Trade Paperback), March 2009
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5191-3 (1416551913)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5191-1 (9781416551911)
Deadly Charm
Howard Books (Trade Paperback), March 2009
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5195-6 (1416551956)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5195-9 (9781416551959)
Omnimystery
keywords for Deadly Charm
...
Location(s) referenced: Detroit,
Michigan.
