Bubbles Ablaze [Hardcover]

Sarah Strohmeyer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2003

The irrepressible heroine of Sarah Strohmeyer's Agatha Award-winning series makes her usual headline-grabbing entrance just in time to heat up Pennsylvania's coal country-in another rip-roaring tale of murder and mayhem.

Bubbles Ablaze finds the redoubtable Ms. Bubbles Yablonsky heeding a call from her boss at the News-Times and racing her Camaro toward a potentially big news story. But when she arrives at an abandoned coal mine, she finds the love of her life, Steve Stiletto, knocked unconscious . . . and the body of another man with a sizeable hole in his chest. Moments later, Bubbles and Stiletto are trapped by an explosion. Convinced that someone wants them dead, they search for their intended assassin in coal country, where they uncover a conspiracy at the Main Mane hairdressing salon, a cadre of women known as the Sirens of Slagville, and a hot spot called Limbo that's been burning underground for forty years.

With a cast of characters headed by the usual suspects-Bubbles's brainy teenage daughter Jane; Jane's clueless boyfriend G; and that dynamite duo, her mother LuLu and paranoid sidekick Genevieve- and led by the singular Bubbles herself, this is another fast and furious tale that will keep readers in Limbo-and in stitches.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Agatha winner Strohmeyer provides lots of madcap fun in her third book (after 2002's Bubbles in Trouble) to feature budding reporter/detective/hairdresser Bubbles Yablonsky. Lured into an unused Pennsylvania coal mine, Bubbles and her "Mel Gibson dead ringer" photographer boyfriend, Steve Stiletto, narrowly escape harm in a cave-in right after they stumble on car-sales magnate Bud Price with "a six-inch bloody hole blown into the middle of his chest." They also find the abandoned car of Bubbles's cousin-in-law, Carl "Stinky" Koolball, the cartographer for McMullen Coal, the company that owns the mine. And now Stinky's missing. The plot thickens like a vat of kapusta as more and more ingredients are added-perhaps too many. On top of her crime-solving, Bubbles must deal with her rebellious teenage daughter, her biker-chick mother's vendetta over some stolen Polish recipes, and a clean-cut stud named Zeke who keeps following her. Some lines are laugh-out-loud funny. Asked if she knows who John Gotti was, Bubbles is "almost positive [he] ran a pizza parlor in Allentown." The dumb-blonde schtick works well with the whole loony business, and Strohmeyer's sharp eye for styles and regional details (Tastykakes, scrapple) adds to the realism and the charm.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"[Bubbles] is a born reporter, an intuitive student of human behavior who has refined her natural skills in that crucible of gossip, a beauty parlor. (Boston Globe) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; 1ST edition (June 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525947388
• ISBN-13: 978-0525947387
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,818,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When I stumbled into this business back in 1997 as a harried mother spoofing Barbie in BARBIE UNBOUND: A PARODY OF THE BARBIE OBSESSION, I had no idea that what started out as a lark would evolve into a career writing twelve novels published in multiple languages - from Thai to German - and even a Lifetime Original Movie: Lying to Be Perfect. Some have been bestsellers. A few have won awards, mostly, I think, by accident.

Now, with the publication of KINDRED SPIRITS, from Dutton, on June 30th, I've taken my writing down a different path, exploring women's friendship, what bonds us, what makes us do incredibly stupid things for one another and how a few martinis along the way can make it all worthwhile. (And, possibly, explain the stupid things per above.)

In KINDRED SPIRITS, I hope you'll not only make friends with Beth, Carol, Mary Kay and Lynne, but also get down to some serious martini making. Ginger, Lemon, Blue, Cosmopolitan - KINDRED SPIRITS has a bunch of recipes.
Here's one for a killer CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY MARTINI.

First, dip the rim of your martini glass in melted bittersweet chocolate and freeze.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of a martini shaker muddle a few fresh raspberries. Add raspberry vodka and Godiva chocolate liqueur plus a splash of Chambord. Shake vigorously with ice. Pour into chocolate- dipped glasses and garnish with fresh raspberries.

Hey. I really want to keep you entertained. But I never said anything about keeping you thin! :)

To learn more about me and my books, please visit http://www.sarahstrohmeyer.com or visit me on FB where I write stupid stuff almost hourly.

Sarah (and her trusty writing partner seen here, Fred)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-buy--great fun reading!, July 12, 2003

By 

Caroline (Brentwood, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bubbles Ablaze (Hardcover)

This is the third in the Bubbles series, one of the few series of books that I buy instead of waiting to get them from the library. If you're a fan of authors like Crusie, Evanovich, Heller, Bartholomew, Hayter, etc., you'll love these books. I love this genre--the humorous romantic mystery-and am always on the lookout for new authors to read, and was happy to discover Bubbles a couple of years ago. I totally recommend Bubbles books (Bubbles Unbound, Bubbles in Trouble, and now Bubbles Ablaze) to anyone looking for a fun read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very mixed bag: a generous 2 for plot, 4+ for characters, July 27, 2005

By 

Barbara L. Pinzka "Book Friend" (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bubbles Ablaze (Hardcover)

This is the third entry in a slapdash, over-the-top mystery series featuring Bubbles Yablonsky, a hairdresser who looks like trailer trash but who longs to become a respected journalist. On the way to her goal, she stumbles and bumbles into one mystery after another, with the aid and support of the Mel-Gibson-esque Steve Stilleto, a top-level news photographer, whom she met on her first assignment.

Bubbles lives in a small blue/black-collar town in a part of America usually forgotten - the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Every character has a story connected to mining; Bubbles' father was killed when she was a young girl because, her family believes, he was a union organizer. Steve, the estranged step-son of a ruthless mine owner, hates his connection to the misery wreaked by Big Coal on innocent men and women.

It's almost impossible to describe a Strohmeyer plot; in a review of an earlier book in the series I think I said she used every idea she ever had. In my 40-some years of mystery-reading I can't think of a more convoluted (and somewhat ridiculous and highly unbelievable) plot.

In this outing Bubbles has left hairdressing for journalism and gets involved in a life-threatening, mysterious "accident" in a mine thought to be dormant and where a murder occurs while she and Steve are there after receiving mysterious messages. The race is on, with casino gambling, underground mine fires, a pierogi fight and who-knows-what's-next among the dozen or so plots and sub-plots.

Normally that would bother me. But Strohmeyer has a tremendous gift for creating eccentric characters, ones you usually can't help but love and want more of. Bubbles can spot a phony ten miles away, but her big heart accepts even the strangest individual, if s/he is hurt and honest (except the multi-pierced "G," a suitor for the hand of her beloved, ultra-smart daughter, Jane, whom she has raised single-handedly and for whom she wants a better future than that which Bubbles endured.

Strohmeyer's work resembles that of reigning working-class detectives' Queen Janet Evanovich, but I like Bubbles and her crew more (making me, a NJ native, a traitor of sorts). Their stories, like Bubbles, continue to develop in each book. Your suspension of disbelief will have to be extra-willing at times, but the fun to be had makes it worthwhile.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lighthearted amateur sleuth, September 14, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bubbles Ablaze (Hardcover)

This one reminds me a bit of Nancy and Ned in the old Nancy Drew books. It's hard to take a mystery seriously when the main character is named Bubbles and the guy's name (well, his last name) is Stiletto. Bubbles, true to her name, looks frothy and wears Spandex, but we're to believe a mind hides beneath the hair spray (reminiscent of Legally Blonde) as she investigates what appears to be theft, extortion and maybe murder.
Totally silly, but fun.