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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable beading and mayhem, January 19, 2005
This review is from: Bead on Trouble (Kitzi Camden Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)
I enjoyed Bead on Trouble by Barbara Burnett Smith, which introduces Kitzi Camden, amateur beader, Texas political royalty, and budding sleuth. At a beading retreat held at a summer camp, one of the bead designers ends up murdered. Since Kitzi had just found out that the designer was having an affair with her best friend's husband, who is also a bead designer at the camp, she sets to work to prove that her friend isn't guilty. The police think Kitzi is a prime suspect, so she is working on her own, trying to snoop around while not looking guilty herself. Kitzi is fun to be around, and I enjoyed her first person narration of the story. Smith does give Kitzi a lot of beading info to tell us in exposition rather than character dialog or plot development, which is a slight weakness in the writing. Kitzi does get the "bad guy" in the end, but it isn't a classic solving of a whodunit; she more falls into the conclusion. I had suspicions but not certainty of who the murderer was, and I found the killer motive and method believable. Smith didn't "cheat" and leave out a lot of info; we're told all we need to know to get as far as Kitzi does. All in all, Bead on Trouble was a fun read, and I look forward to Kitzi's next case.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
TWO BIG THUMBS UP FOR BEAD ON TROUBLE, January 11, 2005
This review is from: Bead on Trouble (Kitzi Camden Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)
I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the first copies of Bead on Trouble. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down!
I've read a lot of cozies, and I love Smith's Purple Sage series, but Kitzi Camden is in a class of her own. A fifty-ish former senator from Texas, Kitzi can be both funny and sweet, but she's got a lot of spunk. She's definitely someone you'll want to get to know better!
When Kitzi's best friend Beth is implicated for killing her husband's lover at a beading retreat, Kitzi races to the rescue. It doesn't take long for her to start digging up dirt on some of the beaders -- including a few tidbits some people might prefer to sweep under the carpet. (I challenge you to figure out who the murderer is -- I sure couldn't.) To make things even more interesting, an old flame appears on the scene... and Kitzi discovers she may still be carrying a torch.
The book is set in an old-fashioned Texas camp that makes me long to be a girl again, and although I'm not a beader, the descriptions of beading -- and the projects -- sounded so intriguing that by the end of the book, I found myself heading to the local craft store.
A great amateur sleuth, a quirky cast of characters, a charming setting, and a puzzler of a mystery... This book is a must-read. My only regret is that it didn't come out until after Christmas!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fine amateur sleuth, October 31, 2004
This review is from: Bead on Trouble (Kitzi Camden Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)
Kitzi Camden and Beth Fairfield have been best friends ever since they met when they were eight years old at Camp Green Clover in Texas. Now in their fifties, they attend the twice yearly Craft Retreats that the camp holds. The two women and Beth's daughter Shannon arrive at the camp.
The teen asks Kitzi to drive her to a hardware store on the first night of camp because Shannon insists she saw her father's car parked there once when he was supposed to be someplace else and he has been going out at night using flimsy excuses. When they arrive at the parking lot they see Shannon's father making out with a camp crafter May Feather. They return to the camp but agree not to say anything to Beth that night; the next morning they learn that May was murdered. Shannon and Mitzi lie to the police about their whereabouts the night before but one of the offices don't believe them. Kitzi decides to do a little sleuthing on her own to see if she can find out who the killer is.
This first installment in Barbara Burnett Smith's new amateur sleuth mystery is a cleverly constructed who done it with enough suspects that the reader won't be able to figure out who the killer is until the author chooses to reveal the perpetrator's identity. Even when the murderer is revealed, readers will be shocked because that person is the last one anyone would guess is capable of killing. The heroine proves that being a half century old means one remains energetic and quick willed as those twenty-five years younger. BEAD ON TROUBLE is an entertaining and lively mystery.
Harriet Klausner
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