Customer Reviews

Hard Road: A Cat Marsala Mystery

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

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Barbara D'Amato's Hard
Luck several years ago, & was pleased to find that she
had published another installment to her Cat Marsala
series, Hard Road. Set in Chicago, the mystery
revolves around a Wizard of Oz festival. The story is
full of suspense, color & drama. As usual, the author
has gone to great lengths to research & provide a
plethora of factually accurate details. This book
also features a substantial epilogue, The Wooden
Gargoyles: Evil in Oz by Brian D'Amato, & Twenty
Questions in Oz: An Oz Quiz. Oz fans will not go
wrong with the purchase of this stunning book.

Cat Marsala thinks she's just entertaining her young nephew with a visit to the Chicago Oz festival but before the night is through, she witnesses two murders, gets herself and her nephew shot at, and escapes through the tunnels that run underneath Chicago.

When her evidence gets the police convinced that her brother is the killer, Cat decides to investigate herself. Yet if it isn't her brother, who could it be. She saw the victim run toward her brother with no evidence of blood anywhere.

The strength of Hard Road is in its descriptions of Chicago and its little peeks into the Oz legend (I also enjoyed the Oz essay at the end although it had nothing to do with the mystery). Its weaknesses are in the lack of character development and fairly linear plot.

HARD ROAD is well written--I certainly kept turning the pages and enjoyed the book.

In Chicago's Grant Park an OZ festival is being held to celebrate the centennial publication of The Wizard of Oz. Frank Baum wrote the book while living in the area and the city wants to honor their celebrity. It promises to be a great event with high tech displays of Oz locales, Oz rides, and food that could have come straight from the fantasy land. Free lance reporter Cat Marsala's brother Barry is in charge of the event so Cat is escorting her nephew Jeremy around the festival until it is time to return him to his father.

When Jeremy and Cat go to meet Barry, a person breaks away from the crowd and rushes over to them. The next thing everybody sees is that individual bleeding to death and Barry holding a knife. Eager to get Jeremy away from the gruesome sight, Cat takes him to a different part of the festival. They have no time to relax because someone starts shooting at them, forcing them to run into the tunnels that lead under the city. The officer makes it clear that Barry is their number one suspect so Cat begins sleuthing, but that leads to her becoming the target of a killer.

Cat Marsala is at the top of her game as she rescues her nephew, tries to clear her brother's name, and finds a major story to sell. Barbara D'Amato does not make her into a superwoman. Instead she is an average female striving to be the best she can be both as a person and as a reporter. Fans of amateur sleuth novels and Oz fans will absolutely love running down this yellow brick road.

Harriet Klausner

A mystery story and the Wizard of Oz and Frank Baum. A great summer read.

The story, set in Chicago with homage to Frank Baum and the Oz stories. I learned a great deal about Baum and his writings in a painless, delightful way!

This was an enjoyable mystery. The realistic Chicago and Oz Festival were a great setting. I'm a fan of the Wizard of Oz movie, but was not familiar with L. Frank Baum's books, so the information on those books was very interesting. I liked the book, including the afterward by the author's son.

despite a colorful premise- a festival celebrating the centennial of the wizard of oz- a surprisingly lackluster whodunit. author's usual vivid sense of place and some interesting tidbits of ozinalia; but thin on the whole,an anemic effort.

I enjoy Cat Marsala mysteries, and was excited to pick this title up. It started out with some drama but soon lost its way, and became boring. I didn't care for the way Cats family treated her, nor was there anything going on romantically, which is something I like to catch up on. I think it could have been developed further, I would have liked to have known what the lieutenants reaction was at the end, and seen Cats family eating some crow. I guess I am not into Oz either, Brian D'Amatos notes (?) at the end were probably the biggest mystery.