Customer Reviews

From Here to Paternity (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 6)

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

 

 

I have read all the books in this series and I find them wonderfully amusing. It's a quick, light-hearted read that puts a smile on your face and not a scare in your pants. I love this series and can't wait for more, more, more.

Jane Jeffrey applies her well-honed motherwit in this cheerful tale of multiple murder. While juggling her roles as parent, sweetheart, best friend and out-of-control bunny-skier, Jane finds time to discover two corpses, become a suspect, and expose several crimes, and their criminals while learning useful information about genealogical research.

As all the Jane Jeffry mysteries are, From Here to Paternity is a light and fluffy mystery with lots of character interaction. Jane's neighbor invited her to visit a ski resort and share her opinion of whether it would be a good investment for the neighbor's husband. While there, Jane, as per usual, discovers a couple of bodies and sets off to discover the murderer with or without the help of detective boyfriend Mel. I liked the resort setting and appreciated the chance to see most of the characters outside of their normal, everyday situations. I was a little confused as to why Jane's opinion about investment property was important, but I guess you had to get her near the bodies somehow.

Jane Jeffreys is the main character. She and her best friend, Shelley, live next door to each other in Chicago. They are housewives with children, and they are really fun and interesting characters. Jane and Shelley usually have some pretty interesting and fun adventures.

In this particular book, they go to Colorado. It is really a business trip for Shelley's husband, but the others come along for a little Colorado mountain vacation. The book was fun and interesting, and needless to say, this is a cozy mystery, so that means a mystery or two had to be solved.

I like the way it was mentioned about the thin air and low humidity, and the way coldness doesn't feel as cold in Colorado as it does in Chicago. They heavily bundled up and then didn't realize they didn't need to bundle up so much.

I did enjoy the "trip" to Colorado. The cozy mountain cabin and the adventures. I think anything in Colorado would be fun and cozy. As usual, Jane and Shelley were fun characters. The Native Americans were interesting, and I learned some things. I enjoyed that part of the book.

I am a huge fan of this series. I love Jane and Shelley. I did enjoy this book.

One star is missing. That is because I found some of the book dull and boring. All that talk about the Russian tsar and the geneology and about characters I didn't even know, and boring classes, etc.

There was a very interesting ending; the twist made it worth having to go through all that Russsian Tsar stuff (which I could care less about) and about geneology about people I don't even know, etc. just to get to the very interesting ending.

Jane and Shelley go to a ski resort that Shelley's husband is thinking of investing in. All the kids and Mel go along. Naturally, murder ensues.

This is an "all right" Jane Jeffry mystery. Much of it reads as if it were written directly from the author's research: here's what I learned about how to dress in ski country, here's what I learned about Indian land rights, here's what I learned about genealogy with emphasis on Mormons and the Romanov tsars. There is so much reviewing of the food served at this fictional ski lodge that it made me suspect that Ms. Churchill and husband took a ski vacation and this book is what allowed them to treat it as a business write-off.

I'm also tiring of the "girl teens are horrible, unnatural, ego-bloated, mouthy creatures" theme that has developed in these books. I cringe every time Jane Jeffry's daughter appears, knowing that some comment about hormones is going to follow.

Definitely a fluffy, cozy mystery, this one has nothing to recommend it, though it also has nothing that screams "don't waste your time!" It was a typical "housewife finds body, solves crime" book with decent characters and plot. The snowman was a nice, humorous touch and I don't really mind the characters, though the relationship between the heroine and her boyfriend is a little tiring. You just want them to get on with it or call it quits, really. Overall, a good book for an afternoon of mindless reading.

Mel's bad mood used for mild humor was a good reader (tow) "in" for me, especially when he admitted to wanting to keep his funk. Jane's contrast to Mel, from her chipper mode, was a pleasant change for "who's got the slump." Jane rambled along easily with her off-duty detective's gripes, as they maneuvered a snow-packed, Colorado mountain road en route to a resort of which Shelley's husband was considering purchase, with a group of investors.

The pair of murders in this icy plot were intriguingly entangled. The first downed body was set in a somewhat classic "stop the cameras" scene; the second provided a more unique "snow job" presentation. I'm not comfortable seeming to be so easy going about people killing people (Jane, as usual, uncovered both deaths). But, cozy mysteries are meant to be light, to relieve the digging efforts, with perfect shovels provided for poking around in the criminal mind, with the hope of unearthing enough "crime-stopper" clues to show How To detoxify motivations, and How To flat-line compulsions to carry on-and-on-and-through-to-the-bitter-end with revenge, greed, seething anger, and/or love un-attained. Have I missed anything?

Oh. Yeah:

-- "The RUSSIANS are COMING!" (To dinner? With a historic succession of Tsars?)

-- "INDIANS are beating Tom Tom's!" (WHO's in the modern-day stew! What burial grounds agenda?)

Regarding exposing the criminal mind, here is a quote from Jane:

>> "... If a murderer were really that clever, he'd have thought of a better way to solve his problem than to kill Mr. (xxx) -- and maybe Mrs. (xxx), too." <<

Additional brief passages of that type of insight referencing criminal craniums have been genetically peppered (can't forget my genes) into this # 6 (See my Listmania and other reviews) in Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series.

As a Colorado native I was, of course, successfully baited by Jane's basing some of her Sherlock processes from an evaluation of what she described as a Colorado rugged-character-attitude (see the book for details), and her feelings of being seen as an outsider.

As I might describe Jane's thought process about that (this is not a quote from the novel; it's my paraphrase, and a bad one):

"What's this? I, an outsider? Moi?? How can this be? Here I am, just friendly-little-ole, saunter-around-comedienne, me (who also happens to be a great Mom, a world-syndicated, dancing-or-stumbling-comedically-around-kids, laid-back, but-perfected-by-flaw-acknowledgment, type of Mom). What can I say? I'm good. You'd better believe it! Or, I'll make you a bad guy in one of my books!"

(Jill Churchill, a.k.a. Janice Brooks, isn't the only author of mysteries in this series; Jane Jeffry is too, and in this one Jane provides her theory on the whereabouts and whereas's of THE IMAGINATION.)

The above paraphrase exposes part of what I enjoy about Jane, who she is, her approach to a life she loves, as a spunky suburban housewife.

Dealing with being an outsider, working around privacy issues, is handled tastefully and tellingly in this plot. I particularly liked the scene in which Jane and Shelley interrogated Tenny, the resort owner's niece, about a recent murder of a family member. At first the sleuthing pair felt awkward manipulating a personal conversation, especially at such an emotionally sensitive time, to obtain private information which felt to them to be none of their business.

You be the judge, of how Jane turns a "busy body" squeamishness into a win-for-all instead of a "free-for-all."

The high chill of the Colorado Rockies may be a climatic antithesis to the heavy heat of Australian Outback, but from some angles, those cultures could be seen as kindred geographic gestalts, at least in being playgrounds in which rugged individualism can flourish, if not in providing sanctuary for privacy issues. Crocodile Dundee would have approved of Jane and Shelley's style of nosiness into emotionally vulnerability areas, and he's one of my favorite characters from any culture-clash-comedy.

Yeah, I know, the culture clash in FROM HERE TO PATERNITY was not about Australia; it was about Chicago suburbs Vs. Colorado Rockies. But, I don't see many common denominators between those two geographic mecca's. Well, there is one, a viral aversion to anything phony. People in both places seem to grow titanium craniums for personality integrity:

"I am what I am."

Only difference is that Jane, as a "military brat," (as she describes herself) has honed a few effective social graces and sees her genuineness as appealing across cultural lines. Colorado mountain people (the rugged individualist, hermit types) rarely wonder how anyone perceives them. They just are. And they often want to be left alone in peace. Try prodding a bear in hibernation.

I was surprised to notice, when I had gotten well into the novel, that I was enjoying the change of environment (of course being a Rocky-Mountain-foothills native might have helped) from the suburban neighborhood with Jane and Shelley's next-door visits, each in their separate domains, though connecting nearly constantly. At the resort the sleuthing pair were sharing close, well-appointed quarters, along with Mel and all their kids (with Paul in the distant background as usual, but "there" ... somewhere ... rather than out-of-town).

Maybe I should add an aside here to clarify that, as has been the case throughout this Jill Churchill series, the adults carry the show, while the kids remain in the background adding a bit of fun warmth periodically. This is in contrast to Diane Mott Davidson's Goldilocks series, in which the teen-angst Vs a Mom being compelled to cater-to-everybody, has often been the prime plot, especially in the earlier books in that (culinary) crime novel series. This is not to criticize either focus of adults/kids in these two mystery series. Both styles have their unique values, issues-to-pursue, and reader appeals.

The skiing lessons and clues for studying family histories were a bonus in this one, and were successfully succinct. I believe I could use them to get going on either a search of my genetic trees, or a slip down the slopes. If I were so inclined. However, being dined in one eye and bereft in the other, I believe I'll pass the skis to the bunnies.

Linda Shelnutt


NOTE TO SHOPPERS (that loveable breed of folk glorified by Jane & Shelley in this mystery series):

-- Speaking of mountain grown, etc., Amazon now sells groceries, even the gourmet stuff including Quinoa (keenwah), an amazingly nutritious (and nutty delicious) grain which was originally grown only by the Inca Indians in high mountains of exotic countries outside the USA.

-- That Super-grain is currently being grown at White Mountain Farms in the San Juan range of the Colorado Rockies. I'm hoping the White Mountain Farms quinoa will be for sale here at some point.

-- The current vendors of Quinoa on Amazon are also impressive, and sell at very competitive prices. I'm ready to try the vender here which (unlike White Mountain farms) offers pre-washed Quinoa, so I don't have to rinse off the saponin coating (a natural insecticide which has developed around this grain over its eons of evolution).

-- Now (while I remain a semi-hermit on a mesa surrounded by the Colorado Rockies) I can buy QUINOA, SAFFRON Strands, JASMINE TEA, KONA COFFEE BEANS (learned about those through Cleo Coyle's coffeehouse series of mysteries, see my Listmania and reviews), LAVENDER ESSENTIAL OIL (learned about EO's through Dr. BJ Ferrell who recommends Young Living EO's, see my Listmania and reviews) ...

-- All in one cart through my laptop PC!!!