Customer Reviews

A Better Class of Murder (Lady Margaret Priam Mysteries)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In East Moulton, Connecticut, Elizabeth Trenka thought the last two fogged-in days were very gray turning her mood bleak. However, that changes when she reads the E-mail on her computer. Her neighbor, software programming test guru Ted Kelso offers her an opportunity to accompany him on a business trip to Manhattan. Xaviera Corporation's CEO Gerald Toth wants to hire Ted, but he is concerned that the product might be stolen. He wants Elizabeth to help him by gauging the integrity of Gerald while spending an all paid trip to a fancy Big Apple hotel.

Gerald's friend Lady Margaret Priam escorts Elizabeth around the city as a friendship has sprung up between them. However, unbeknownst to either of them, a killer recently murdered a woman named Xaviera on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. Could two women having a good time together in the big Apple be the next targets?

Either Joyce Christmas is a genius or lunatic. She takes the amateur sleuth stars from her two series (Lady Priam and Betty Trenka) and brings them together in a plot that leads to A BETTER CLASS OF MURDER. The story line is fun and enjoyable as both women stay in character yet work well together. Anyone who reads this merger novel will agree that Ms. Christmas has pulled off a coup and hopefully will not only have her two heroines star in their own tales, but come together again in a future story.

Harriet Klausner

I thought Joyce Christmas foisted a pretty lousy book on her readers with "Going Out in Style," but "A Better Class of Murder" has to take the prize for being one of the most contrived, ridiculous and unbelievable plotlines ever conceived--one in which the murder is almost an afterthought to the list of restaurants, clothes, etc. It's pretty clear that Joyce Christmas has either lost her creative edge, or has found what she considers a good way to sell a few more books to unsuspecting readers...but she--and her publisher--ought to be ashamed! Do yourself a favor and skip this ...!

Having had the great honor of sitting on the same author panel at the recent Left Coast Crime Mystery Convention as the legendary Joyce Christmas, I made it a point of reading A BETTER CLASS OF MURDER. In this mystery, Ms. Christmas brings her two series leads--Lady Margaret Priam and Betty Trenka--together for the first time. By having these ladies join forces, Ms. Christmas creates an adventure that is a thoroughly entertaining read. Each lady remains consistently in character as they solve a murder involving high-tech computing and the New York social elite. I enjoyed this book completely, and I recommend it highly.

The story seems to be intended for fans who just want to spend time with the characters, and to have that fanfic joy of two favourite characters meeting. But if so, the unnecessary and repetitive background material could surely have been omitted? After the third or fourth time reading about Betty's relationship with her former employer, I wanted to put on a hard-hat to save myself from being beaten over the head with any more irrelevant 'character development'.
The mystery itself is a poor undernourished thing, and I understand the author's need to pad it out to book-length, but couldn't she have padded it out with something interesting?
If you already love everything about Trenka and Priam in their separate books, you will love this one. You'll be all excited by Betty buying a slinky black dress, and by Margaret dithering over whether to reignite an old flame. You won't mind the clunky expository style of the narrative, with everything explained to you as you go along.
If you aren't a Christmas fan, I doubt this book will make you one.

Two characters created by Joyce Christmas, Lady Margaret Priam and Betty Trenka, meet in this book and join forces to solve a murder. Two young boys find a woman dead on the beach and they retrieve a computer disk near her body. Meanwhile Betty Trenka has been asked by her wheelchair-bound friend, Ted Kelso, to meet with Gerald Toth, a computer businessman, to see if he would be a good person with whom to do business. Toth has offered Kelso a lot of money to test a software program, but Kelso thinks that it is stolen goods. Betty travels to New York, where she meets Lady Margaret and they attempt to discover Gerald Toth's true character and also, who has murdered the woman on the beach. The identity of the murderer is hinted at in the book and there are no big surprises when Betty is finally able to point the finger at the perpetrator. However, it is fun to read about Betty's adventures in New York among the rich and famous.