Peace, Love and Murder
A Bo
Forrester Mystery
Nancy
Holzner
Five Star (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59414-775-2 (1594147752)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-775-3 (9781594147753)
Publication Date: August 2009
List Price: $25.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Finding a corpse in the trunk of your cab is a rotten
way to start the day. For Bo Forrester, things go straight downhill
from there. The cops are asking an awful lot of questions. The murder
weapon turns up too close for comfort. And the attractive woman giving
him the eye turns out to be Trudy Hauser, a cute-but-crazy deputy dead
set on arresting him for murder.
Bo returned to Rhodes, an upstate New York college town, hoping to
reconcile with his parents, gentle hippies who couldn’t accept
his decision to join the Army at eighteen. Twenty years later, the
commune where he grew up is a subdivision, and his parents are long
gone. Pondering his next move, Bo takes a job driving a cab. And he has
no clue how the bullet-riddled body of art philanthropist Fred Davies
ended up in the trunk.
Now, he can’t turn around without bumping into
Trudy—it’s not her case, but that’s not slowing her
down. The local cops, suspecting robbery as the motive, are right
behind her. When Davies’s beautiful widow asks Bo for help, he
can’t say no. Starting his own investigation, he’s plunged
into a world of privilege, corruption, and high-stakes greed. A lot of
people had reason to want Davies dead: a flirtatious art history
professor with a taste for booze and men; her insanely jealous,
ex-felon husband; the business partner with a secret addiction; and an
avant-garde artist who proclaims that murder is the ultimate art form.
As the body count escalates, Bo must combine the skills he learned as a
soldier with the values he grew up with on the commune to flush out a
vicious murderer—if he manages to stay alive that long.
Review: Nancy
Holzner introduces upstate New York cab driver Bo Forrester who's under
suspicion after police stop him for a minor traffic violation and then
find a body in the trunk of his car in Peace, Love, and Murder.
The dead man is Fred Davies, founder of the Davies Foundation for the
Arts, which operated the Finger Lake Artists in Residence program,
promoting promising talent who passed their rigorous application
process. Though Bo isn't a suspect, he's a person of interest and
deputy Trudy Hauser takes it upon herself to link Bo to the crime. A
few days later when one of Bo's fares turns up murdered, he really
looks guilty. So if the police think he's involved, he might as well
be, and seeks to discover who really killed Fred Davies and why they're
trying to frame Bo for the the murder.
There's no shortage of people who might have wanted Davies dead, and
this diverse group keeps Peace,
Love, and Murder interesting. A financial officer for the
foundation with a gambling problem, an art expert who fancies herself a
femme fatale, a skinny white rapper artist trying to make a name for
himself, and more. The only character who is really unlikeable, at
least initially, is Deputy Trudy Hauser. Her antics seem more
appropriate for a teenager than a law enforcement professional. That
she and Bo will ultimately work together is a given; it's just that the
tension that supposedly exists between them early in the book seems
forced and unnatural. Still, the story serves as a good introduction to
the characters.
In a promising twist for future books in the series, Bo has returned to
his home town looking for his parents, hippies from the 60s from whom
he has been estranged and lost contact with. Peppered throughout Peace, Love, and Murder are
references to his parents and Bo's search for them; the conclusion of
the book offers a hint where they might be ... and is likely the
setting for more amateur sleuthing by Bo Forrester.
Special thanks to Nancy Holzner for providing an ARC of Peace, Love and Murder for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Peace, Love and Murder? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Peace, Love and Murder
Five Star (Hardcover), August 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59414-775-2 (1594147752)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-775-3 (9781594147753)
Omnimystery keywords for Peace, Love and Murder ...
Location(s) referenced: New York State.
