UltraViolet
A Jane
Kelly Mystery
Nancy
Bush
Kensington Books (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-7582-0909-6 (0758209096)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7582-0909-2 (9780758209092)
Publication Date: October 2007
List Price: $19.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): For process server-turned-private investigator, Jane
Kelly, weddings are murder. Usually that’s a metaphor, but for
newly minted P.I. Jane Kelly, it’s fast becoming an
all-too-accurate nightmare. Roland Hatchmere, plastic surgery magnate,
has been found murdered just before his daughter’s society
wedding. The weapon is a wedding gift: a heavy, silver serving tray.
The prime suspect is Roland’s ex-wife #2: Violet
“Ultraviolet” Purcell, she of the
eccentric-bordering-on-insane Purcell clan.
Violet insists that she’s completely innocent. After all, Roland
was her absolute favorite ex-husband. And she was nowhere NEAR him at
the time of the murder. Well, okay, technically she did meet him for a
little pre-nup, bedroom tête-à-tête just before. And
they did have a huge fight. And she did hit him with the tray. But just
once. Honest. So could Jane just hurry up and prove her innocence?
Sure. That should be easy. Let’s just file this one under
“12 Kinds of Crazy.” But when Jane’s boss, the
temporarily sidelined Dwayne, is convinced Violet’s telling the
truth, well, there’s nothing for Jane to do but take her lovable,
misfit pug, Binky, and sniff out a few clues.
Everywhere Jane and The Binkster look, there’s a suspect odder
than the last, including two grown, very troubled kids, an ex-wife
strung out on Botox and a current wife who’s a cross between
Donna Reed and a sex kitten—all of them eager to blame
Roland’s death on Violet. It doesn’t help that
Violet’s story keeps changing faster than a celebrity’s
hair extensions. To make matters worse, Dwayne’s convalescence is
turning him into Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window,” complete
with binoculars, and he’s convinced there is something very bad
going down in the private houses across Lakewood Bay, something that
needs Jane and Binky’s close attention. Faster than she can say,
“I took criminology courses for this?”, Jane is up to her
eyeballs in lies, secrets, Extreme Botox, New Wave bands, truck-stop
coffee kiosks (don’t ask), very good scones, Junior League,
wedding bandits, high school sociopaths, Plastic Pet Cemetery
(don’t ask, part II), a budding attraction to her boss, the
Millionaire’s Club, and someone who would kill to keep the past
buried.
The deeper Jane digs, the less she wants to know. Every truth leads her
deeper into danger, and soon, Jane wonders if her first official case
might also be her last…and if the client she’s been asked
to clear just might be the coldest black widow of all …
Review: Jane
Kelly gets involved in all sorts of mayhem in Nancy Bush's breezy third
mystery featuring the Oregon private investigator, UltraViolet.
Jane's primary case has her investigating whether Violet Purcell, the
"UltraViolet" in the book's title, murdered her ex-husband and if she
did not, who did. The murder weapon: a silver serving tray that was a
gift to her daughter who just happened to be getting married on the
fateful day. Violet doesn't deny hitting him with the tray during an
argument though she insists he was alive and well when she left. Most
of the wedding guests are potential suspects leaving Jane to determine
who had the greatest motive to murder the father of the bride.
UltraViolet is certainly
entertaining but, at well over 350 pages, it is far too long. Part of
the problem here is an astonishing amount of repetition of facts. In
the first chapter, for example, the reader is informed no less than 10
times that Jane's employer Dwayne has had an accident and his broken
leg is in a cast. Unless the author is concerned about readers skimming
through the pages, it's unnecessary to be so repetitive. Having Dwayne
be a semi-invalid, however, allows Bush to fill more space in the book
by introducing a second Hitchcockian plot involving mysterious
happenings across the bay. In some ways, and probably ironically, this
subplot is more interesting than the whodunit at the wedding.
Despite Jane's nearly constant activity (she seems to burn more
calories in a day than most people do in a week), the author keeps the
story briskly moving forward. Bush is adept at misdirection and as the
number of suspects dwindles in the waning pages, it's still something
of a surprise to find out who killed Violet's ex. And that's probably
the most important part of a mystery, to keep the reader guessing until
the very end.
Special thanks to Nancy Berland Public Relations for providing an ARC of UltraViolet for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read UltraViolet? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Candy Apple Red
Kensington Books (Hardcover), October 2005
ISBN-10: 0-7582-0905-3 (0758209053)
ISBN-10: 978-0-7582-0905-4 (9780758209054)
Electric Blue
Kensington Books (Hardcover), October 2006
ISBN-10: 0-7582-0907-X (075820907X)
ISBN-10: 978-0-7582-0907-8 (9780758209078)
UltraViolet
Kensington Books (Hardcover), October 2007
ISBN-10: 0-7582-0909-6 (0758209096)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7582-0909-2 (9780758209092)
Omnimystery keywords for UltraViolet ...
Location(s) referenced: Oregon.
