5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brava, Ms. Nichols!!, April 15, 2005
This review is from: Caviar Dreams (Paperback)
Amazing! Someone finally wrote a much more realistic amateur sleuth/police procedural. The characters are realistic; Lisa who is trying to be a photographer but is working as a temp in the meantime; Debbie who is sweet, somewhat naïve, wanting to believe in romance and the best in people; and the arrogant businessman who feels wealth and position are the most important things of all. Sense of place is well done, as is dialogue. But what impressed me most of all is that it is not Lisa running around investigating clues, but the police who investigate and solve the crime. And Ms. Nichols makes it all work, and ties it all together with a suspenseful ending and an absolutely delightful book. I don't often gush, but this book deserves it. Brava!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very readable cozy, February 4, 2006
This review is from: Caviar Dreams (Paperback)
Struggling artist Lisa Watson and her friend Debbie Pratt have an evening of junk food and videos planned, homely pleasures intended to ease Lisa's recent professional disappointments. But their girls' night in proves to have unpleasant--indeed fatal--consequences. At the seedy video store Lisa drags her friend to they encounter con man Derek Grayson, who gets to work at once chatting up Debbie. She, it turns out, is just what Derek is looking for in a woman: dumpy but financially comfortable, and needy enough to fall hard for his pretty boy looks and smarmy charm. Derek quickly sets about moving in with Debbie and maxing out her credit cards, while at the same time working on his Big Score. He insinuates himself into the life of Cincinnati's most eligible bachelor, Robert Helton, the CEO of Helton International and a closeted homosexual so afraid of being outed that he's a perfect candidate for blackmail. When eventually Lisa crosses Helton's path, she becomes aware only belatedly of their mutual acquaintance with Debbie and Derek.
I was, I must say, very pleasantly surprised by this book. It's released by a small Canadian POD publisher, and it has the somewhat amateurish look of a self-published book. I was worried I'd encounter stilted prose and at best a merely adequate story. Instead what I got was a great read. The book is well written and the characters nicely developed. The plot definitely held my interest. It's in fact downright gripping in parts. There were quite a few small errors in the text that a careful editor would have caught, but nothing important enough to detract from my enjoyment of the book. Caviar Dreams is a very readable cozy--a mystery in the Colombo tradition in that we know whodunit from the get-go and follow the characters' solution of the crime. Definitely recommended. This one deserves a wider readership.
Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun Book, May 17, 2004
This review is from: Caviar Dreams (Paperback)
A very enjoyable reading experience. The main character was so real life that I felt she was one of my close friends. Involving such real-life characters in a murder story made the book charming and hard to put down. I'm looking forward to the author's next book and hope to see the main character reappear in a future book.
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