Customer Reviews

The Clovis Incident: A Mystery

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sasha Solomon needs to start her PR consulting business back up sine she's just been fired from her current job. Fortunately, she has one possibility already lined up. The city of Clovis wants to increase their tourism revenue and is looking for a PR consultant to help them do that. As an added bonus, she'll get to spend time with one of her best friends, Mae King, a local dairy farmer.

Mae is acting weird, however. When Sasha finally gets Mae to open up, Mae reveals two secrets. First, aliens have regularly kidnapped her. Second, there's a dead body on her land, and she doesn't really want to call the police for fear they'll arrest her.

Sasha isn't keen on the idea of keeping the secret and calls the police the first chance she gets. After she does, she realizes Mae's fears were justified as she seems to be the only suspect the police want to talk about. Mae's daughter isn't helping matters any by sticking her nose into the two's friendship.

Meanwhile, at her interview with the Chamber of Commerce, Sasha learns they want her to come up with a PR plan to put them on the map and greatly increase their tourism revenue. And they hint that the aliens in the area really just might be the way to go. She's got just one week to come up with a plan to present to find out if she'll get the job.

The book starts out all over the place, with talk of Sasha's hallucinations and a visit with her mom. I was beginning to wonder if the praise I'd heard for the book was well founded or not, but then Sasha arrived in Clovis. It's really not too far in, but from that point on, the plot picks up and the book becomes quite interesting. There are several red herrings that distract for a while, but the solution is a little obvious before the end. Even so, the author does a good job of keeping the reader entertained with quirky and sinister characters. The writing style is quite fun as well. There are long passages of dialog at times, and every so often, the author uses a cleaver turn of phrase that makes you stop and reread the passage to fully enjoy it.

The couple of flaws are worth mentioning, but hardly detract from the overall enjoyment. It's a quirky cozy that will leave the reader ready for Sasha's next case.

Pari Noskin Taichert is a journalist and public relations consultant. She draws upon her experience and expertise in The Clovis Incident, an intriguing and superbly crafted murder mystery which following the unexpected adventure of Sasha Solomon, an ordinary PR director fired from her job as PR director of Albuquerque's only holistic HMO, and then travels to the small New Mexico town of Clovis to bid on a PR project for the local Chamber of Commerce only to become entangled in a dark and ruthless plot of murder and intrigue. An exciting journey through hidden motives in a desperate search to protect oneself with the power of truth and insight before it is too late, The Clovis Incident is unique and compelling in its masterful interplay of layers of plot. The Clovis Incident is Taichert's rather impressive debut effort and will quickly earn her legions of appreciative fans who will look eagerly toward her next title.

Want to take an unusual roller coast ride of a mystery? Pari Noskin Taichert's debut novel, "The Clovis Incident," introduces offbeat series heroine Sasha Solomon, a freelance PR professional who gets a New Age trancendental overload and is fired from her job--all in the first chapter. Hallucinations, space aliens, a killer, Sasha battles them all as she researches the small New Mexico town of Clovis in search of a lucrative PR job. She lands in the middle of a murder when an old friend finds a body on her land. Sasha deals with an intriguing gallery of small town characters, vindictive relatives, and cops of all types who become involved because the victim was an important foreign military officer. The reader bounces with Sasha from likely suspect to likely suspect. Her inquiring mind eventually gets her into trouble--several threats and two life-threatening situations--before she figures out the killer and the motivation.

Pari has finished a second Sasha novel and is busy on a third. Readers can look forward to more adventures in out of the way New Mexico small towns as Sasha continues looking for employment but finds mystery and suspense.

Based on the reviews above, I expected to enjoy this book a lot more than I did. While the writing style was engaging and some of the characterization simply wonderful (loved her whipped cream fixation), it was just too hard to truly like this protagonist as a person. She'd done the right thing, yet her friend was upset. Instead of going to her friend, she figures she'll just do other things. She leaves town without even telling her sick mom where she will be. She seems to have some serious, unresolved issues with her past, but then we never learn what those things are. It was hard to relate. I also wished the mystery had been harder to figure out. Still, I like this writer's writing style and her wit and I will keep an eye out for her next book, only this time I may just get it at the library first.

THE CLOVIS INCIDENT by Pari Noskin Taichert - At page 20 I didn't care for this book - aliens, UFO's and hallucinations. At page 40, as the plot began to thicken. I began to change my mind. At page 64 I hit the paragraph that convinced me this was a good book worth reading to the end. "If aliens were so advanced, with technology that far exceeded our own, why did they make a habit of snatching dowdy girls and pasty boys for their experiments? Why didn't they go for nuclear physicists or Nobel Prize winners! And why was it always small town hicks?" Sasha Solomon, PR consultant and amateur sleuth, goes to Clovis looking for a job, only to learn her friend Mae not only has discovered a dead body on her dairy farm but has also been "abducted" by aliens. As Sasha gets drawn deeper and deeper into the case it seems every government agency and half the town's leading citizens are already involved, all with different agendas. The ending is satisfying and startling, you might even say unreal. . A must read.

What do aliens, a murdered pilot, a wise-cracking PR professional and a not-so-sleepy town have in common? They're all part of the wild ride we take in "The Clovis Incident," Pari Noskin Taichert's witty read about an abnormal turn of events in the tiny town of Clovis, New Mexico.

Sasha Solomon, the savvy but imperfect protagonist, is off to Clovis to land a job promoting the area's attractions. While in Clovis, the public relations practitioner hooks up with longtime friend Mae, a Clovis native and rancher. But the Mae she encounters is shaky and nervous, and persistent probing by the un-shy Sasha reveals why: There's a corpse with its head stuck in a cattle trough on Mae's land. Not only that, but the usually steadfast Mae reveals that she is being visited by space aliens who kidnap her, let her go, then kidnap her again.

With the plot deftly established, Noskin Taichert unfolds her tale against the backdrop of Clovis - the kind of place whose slower, interesting rhythms urbanites yearn to understand. The story line moves quickly in this fun, engaging read. We learn about public relations, which is neat; and we get to look closely at Sasha, whose imperfect humanity we find refreshing, even reassuring. (She hallucinates, she has a talking cat, and she shoots aerosol-propelled whipped cream into her mouth as comfort food.)

With its quirky twists and turns, The Clovis Incident is one heck of a whodunnit. Read it for adventure; read it for fun. I can't wait for Noskin Taichert's next effort.

Several reviewers have done a spiffy job of giving a basic plot summary. I would like to comment on the author's writing. This book is just hilarious at times. I am always impressed with good comedic writing, and Ms. Taichert has certianly mastered the technique. Add a little murder, mayhem, and whipped cream, and you have yourself a great read. Super congrats to Ms. Taichert. Can't wait for the next!

The subject matter of this novel was what drew me, but as other reviewers here have mentioned, the book has flaws. My main complaint was that there were too many characters. I could not keep track of them all, and think that a lot of them should have been either developed more or dropped altogether. Bob the boyfriend, for one, whose only function it seems was to talk to her on the phone once or twice. The romantic connection between the detective and Sasha was just not believable. Still, she has a way of writing that grabbed my attention, so I struggled through reading plot sidetracks that often went nowhere. I will try to find another one of her books, and see if she has developed as a writer, or at least gotten a better editor. But as another reviewer said, I'll get it from the library next time.

This is a fresh approach to the mystery genre. Protagonist Sasha Solomon is not a private detective, insurance investigator, salvage expert, mystery writer, or busybody amateur sleuth. She doesn't have inside connections with the police, the department of motor vehicles, or the street-savvy underworld. Rather than looking for trouble, she's looking for a regular paycheck in the PR field and a dependable supply of whipped cream.

Sasha is you and me - if we unexpectedly find ourselves in the small-town New Mexico neighborhood of a murder. A murder that plants a good friend in a scenario mixing blood, money, and alien abductions. A number of suspicious townspeople have their own reasons for keeping Sasha in the dark, but she is just stubborn enough to stumble towards the truth. At her own peril, of course.

Author Pari Noskin Taichert is at her best in describing the details that perch readers on the worn counterstools of a Clovis diner, with an ear out for gossip on what that Solomon woman and the police detective might have been up to over at the motor lodge very late last night. That's just another of the many questions Sasha herself would like answered.

Little green men or not, no one is going anywhere until the truth is uncovered. "The Clovis Incident" is a 4-and-a-half star read that promises to get even more rewarding if we get the chance to follow Sasha Solomon on her next trip out of Albuquerque into the sidetracks of mayhem.

Oh, are you in for a treat when you meet Sasha Solomon! Snappy wit, sharp dialogue, first rate mystery and then add UFO's, conversations with her cat, international intrigue, the magic of southeatern New Mexico, and...oh, too much to mention without giving the plot away. This is one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time and I'm eagerly awaiting the next in the series. No wonder Tony Hillerman have her a rousing review!

Take it from me, a mystery writer who knows how hard it is to keep pages turning, when I tell you Pari will keep you up all night with this one!