Customer Reviews

A Deadly Arrangement (Feng Shui Mysteries)

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

 

 

For five years, bicoastal traveler Salome Waterhouse rented out the Perfume Mansion in Holyrood off of Monterey Bay to artist Palmer Fordham. Because she feels the place has bad vibes, Salome, a practitioner of Feng Shui, has not entered the place in years. However, this morning she goes there because an anonymous person hired her to Feng Shui the place as a birthday present to Palmer.

Instead of her usual scenario, Salome finds a murdered Palmer in the house and immediately calls her cousin Phyllis, chief of police. Phyllis arrives and takes charge of the crime scene while treating Salome with contempt and as the prime suspect. Phyllis always blamed Salome for inheriting the Perfume Mansion, a place she covets. After feeling her cousin's negative vibes Salome knows that she need some strong Feng Shui medicine to prove her innocence and to clean the evil that resides in her mansion.

A DEADLY ARRANGEMENT is a different type of police procedural-amateur sleuth tale due to the large amounts of Feng Shui incorporated throughout the plot. The story line is cleverly designed but is disrupted by the swings back and forth in time. Salome is an interesting and refreshing lead character and the cast's varying degrees of acceptance of her leads to greater understanding of the protagonist and her practice. Followers of Feng Shui will feel the positive vibes emanating from this plot while other readers will say phooey to way too much Feng Shui.

Harriet Klausner

I loved this book. It was such fun to read a book about a character that thinks and operates like I do. As a feng shui practitioner thinking and seeing things from the feng shui aspect is automatic. I only marked the book down because I found way to many homonyms. One or two I can overlook but there were many in this book and careful editing would have caught them, spell check will not. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Osborne's books.

Salome Waterhouse finds Palmer Fordham dead. He rents the house from her that has been in her family for years. She is a Feng Shui practicioner. She had received an anonymous payment and request to perform a Feng Shui consultation for his birthday.

Her cousin Phyllis Waterhouse is the Chief of Police. Their relationship is strained because their grandfather left the Perfume Mansion (the house she'd rented to Palmer and surrounding land) to Salome. Dora Whalen, the Perfume's housekeeper, lives in the caretaker's cottage on the grounds of the Perfume. Salome's ex, Gabe, is a famous mystery author. Salome did lots of research with him when they were married. Palmer was a famous artist.

Salome looks into Palmer's life and tries to help figure out who would have wanted Palmer dead. It ends up putting Phyllis and her in danger.

This book was not one of my favorites. It is well written, but I found it to be VERY heavy with Feng Shui. I would have liked the story better without so much description of Feng Shui. I don't think it contributed to the story.

I will say that I have read the 2nd book in this series and liked it much better.

I enjoyed this book, and look forward to reading the rest of the series. It was a fast read based on a feng shui practitioner -- and with feng shui thus interspersed throughout. (Knowing virtually nothing about feng shui, I found that very intriguing.)
The mystery/solution seemed hopelessly convoluted and far-fetched, but this was probably the result of it being the author's first book ... I'm sure that the rest of the series will be more believable -- and, as previously stated, the feng shui connection was unique and intriguing.