Customer Reviews

Don't Drink the Water: An E.J. Pugh Mystery

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

 

 

E.J. Pugh never much liked her sisters, so it's only because the manipulations of her mother that she finds herself spending her vacation with them on a Caribbean island. Family disfunctions play out as expected until E.J. discovers a body in the house with connections to one of her brother-in-laws. She may not much like her family, but as accidents continue E.J. and her lovingly tolerant hubby will investigate to protect them from a murderer.

Although a relatively short novel, the pace is fast and entertaining, interjected with the humor that Cooper has mastered in all of her mysteries.

This book combined mystery, humor and travel. Anyone visiting St. John will recognize Cruz Bay, lush hills, abandoned sugar mills, and lazy afternoons with fritters and rum! Her relationship with her sisters was real and hilariously funny. She often would go back into her childhood and relate events that explains her love-hate relationship with her sisters. The time she was locked in the bathroom and left on the family road trip made the reader understand her often stormy relationship with her sisters. The murder was the focal point of the book, but her descriptions of St. John, her hilarious characters, and her family relationships kept me turning pages into the dark, humid, tropical night!

Although E.J. Pugh and her 3 sisters don't get along, their mother contrives a group vacation for them in the Virgin Islands. (Though I noted that mom didn't go along on vacation with the group!) Naturally E.J. finds several dead bodies, to the point that the local police chief says E.J.'s group causes him more problems than college kids on Spring Break.

While exploring the island wonders and solving the murders, E.J. finds herself delving deeper into her family relationships. A fast, easy read, you can take this one to the beach with you. I found myself laughing out loud at times.

We've read all of Susan Rogers Cooper's delightful stories, including the six Sheriff Milt Kovak books, the (very difficult to find) two Kimmey Kruse stand-up comedian stories, and the previous six EJ Pugh mysteries. Obviously we like Cooper's great writing ability; one would swear she can turn a soccer practice carpooling chore into an event of note with her descriptive and insightful commentary on everyday life. All of her characters tend to be a little low profile, humble practitioners with an overdose of curiosity that leads to solving crimes, sometimes almost unwittingly. Unlike her sheriff, who of course was paid to catch killers, Kimmey and EJ are strictly amateurs who depend on cajoling friends and policemen into helping move along reasonably good plots.

In this story, EJ is far from her home (Texas), and is re-united with her three sisters (with spouses/partners along) in a contrived vacation in St. Johns cooked up by her mother who wants to see the girls "get along". Much of the story revolves around their childhood goings-on and/or their perceptions of each other's adult lives and situations in society. Hence, the plot is almost a little secondary to the mental and verbal meanderings in the Virgin Islands setting. There is a murder or two to solve, and even if a bit improbable in total, we're hooked enough by a few real clues mixed in with several red herrings along the way to feel some suspense. Indeed, we thought the ending fairly surprising, and hardly anticipated the ultimate culprit at all.

While we'd readily give almost all Cooper's books 4 stars, we don't think this one was one of her best -- maybe the unusual setting (although entertaining in itself in some ways) put our author off her usual game plan; and with none of the regular supporting characters to help out, we didn't know anybody here either. Still, the faithful will want to read this; and while many of her others seemed better to me, all 15 books are fun, worthwhile "reads" without demanding too much from us the reader but "enjoy". Why not ?!!

This is the first book of the series that I have read. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. The dynamics between four very different sisters on vacation were very well drawn. The characters are very real, the mystery interesting, and I found myself laughing at the situations the characters found themselves in at points.

This is my first E.J. Pugh mystery. It was a very fast read, the mystery kept me guessing, and I liked the characters of the four sisters. The memories of E.J. and her sisters while they were growing up greatly helped in understanding the dynamics of their dysfunctional family. The mystery itself was good, clues were there, but not obvious. I will read the other books in this series with enjoyment. If you are looking for an easy fast read, this is it.

This was the first book that I've ever read by Ms. Cooper. I picked it up intially because I had been to St. John, U.S.V.I. a few times in the past, and wanted to see which sites were mentioned.

I liked this book, but I found the writing style to be a bit spare. I have no real mental image of what the protagonist and her husband look like, or whether or not I would like them if I met them. The story itself was interesting, and the sibling problems added a nice twist to the story. Actually, I probably would have liked the book better if the family relationships were the sole focus of the book (Ms. Cooper seemed to handle that well). The mystery seemed to be a secondary issue here, and the whole treatment of the crimes that were occuring seemed too lackadaisical.

Although I liked the book, I don't yet know if I care enough about the characters to read the other stories. I'll have to think about that for a while...

This book combined mystery, humor and travel. Anyone visiting St. John will recognize Cruz Bay, lush hills, abandoned sugar mills, and lazy afternoons with fritters and rum! Her relationship with her sisters was real and hilariously funny. She often would go back into her childhood and relate events that explains her love-hate relationship with her sisters. The time she was locked in the bathroom and left on the family road trip made the reader understand her often stormy relationship with her sisters. The murder was the focal point of the book, but her descriptions of St. John, her hilarious characters, and her family relationships kept me turning pages into the dark, humid, tropical night!