Hot and Bothered: A Bel Barrett Mystery [Mass Market Paperback]

Jane Isenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

The Beat Goes On

Things are scarier since that black day in September that shook Manhattan and the world. But across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, community college professor Bel Barrett intends to live without fear, despite her honey Sol's newborn wish that they retire and escape to somewhere remote.

So Bel turns her attentions to home renovation, civic matters, and to an increasingly bitter battle for scholarship money, a contest she and three others must ultimately decide. Then one of the other judges is found dead on the mean streets of Hoboken -- a woman who lived a strange double life as academic by day and stripper by night.

Unsure whether the solution to her friend's murder lies in the hallowed halls of learning or the smoky dens of flesh and fantasy, Bel decides to investigate both. But education and titillation could prove a most volatile mix -- and a murderer may be closer than she thinks.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bel Barrett is Evanovich's Stephanie Plum twenty-five years later - sassy and brassy."
-- Baldwin City Ledger (UNKNOWN ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Jane Isenberg taught English to urban community college students for close to thirty years. She has been writing mysteries ever since she experienced her first hot flash. Her copies of Modern Maturity are delivered to her new home in Amherst, Massachusetts, that she shares with her husband Phil Thompkins.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Avon (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380818884
• ISBN-13: 978-0380818884
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,974,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew up in Passaic, New Jersey, married, moved to Connecticut, and, in 1962 began a teaching career that lasted forty years. The first seven were the hardest and moved me to write a memoir about my experiences teaching high school English in New Haven. Titled GOING BY THE BOOK, it won the James N. Britten Award for Inquiry in English Language Arts from the National Council of Teachers of English in 1996. My next thirty-three years teaching community college students in Connecticut and then New Jersey and my first hot flash drove me to write THE "M" WORD. A comic mystery, it features a menopausal community college English prof as amateur sleuth and is the first of eight novels and a shorter anthologized work that make up The Bel Barrett Mystery Series. HOT WIRED, the last novel in the series was published in 2005 by which time I had retired from teaching and moved to the Puget Sound area. I looked to my new surroundings for inspiration and soon began work on a historical mystery set in Seattle's Jewish community during the Gold Rush and in 1965.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great mystery, September 30, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hot and Bothered: A Bel Barrett Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)

Fully tenured professor Bel Barret is giving a Faculty Development Seminar to new teachers on how to cope with their new students. At same time she is organizing the neighborhood block party and helping Sol, her significant other, cope with post-traumatic stress syndrome after seeing the World Trade Towers destroyed. Finally, she along with new neighborhood resident Eunice and two other neighbors, decide who is going to be awarded this year's scholarship for a semester at River Edge Community College in Jersey City.

Not too long after the block party, Eunice who moonlights as a stripper, is murdered. The police are looking at the nineteen-year-old student who didn't win the scholarship as a viable suspect. Sol wants Bel to figure out who the real killer is, as does the Dean of RECC and she gladly accommodates them because she doesn't want to see her young neighbor go to prison.

Most of HOT AND BOTHERED takes place in Hoboken, NJ one month after the events of Sept 11th and the people of that city can see where the two towers used to be. It affects everyone in a deep way but they all feel isolated and fearful. The heroine, who is in the process of major home repairs, does not want to leave the area and move to a quiet and isolated village as Sol keeps urging her to do. The investigation she conducts keeps her mind off her personal worries and involves her in something that she loves doing. Jane Isenberg knows how to write an excellent amateur sleuth novel with so many red herrings that reader will actually be totally shocked when the killer's identity is revealed.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Check out a wise, witty, mature sleuth--with a great plot!, December 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Hot and Bothered: A Bel Barrett Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)

Picking up a new Bel Barrett mystery is a special treat for all those discerning readers who love a complex plot, but also like watching fascinating,continuing characters grow and change from book to book. In each book in this series, Jane Isenberg delivers both qualities--plus a great many smiles of rueful self-recognition along the way. In Hot and Bothered, Bel, Illuminada, Betty, Sol and the other midlife amateur sleuths we've come to know don't disappoint. They tackle a life-changing post-9/11 world and a close-to-home murder with seasoned skills and witty skepticism. This is a solid, well-crafted read, with surprising plot elements and reality-based character development. Isenberg's warm humor and unerring eye for human quirks keep interest alive from involving beginning to unexpected ending. If you haven't already met Bel and her crew, you have a satisfying series treat in store, starting with "The 'M' Word." And if you're already a Bel Barrett fan, you'll be as excited as I am to experience this timely foray into murder that combines the best of the courageous Big Apple (and environs)with a taste of its slightly sleazy underworld. Real people, real backgrounds, real mystery writing--it's all here. Hot and Bothered is cool and classy, indeed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An X-rated Murder, March 4, 2005

By 

Beth D (Omaha, NE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hot and Bothered: A Bel Barrett Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)

Bel Barrett is having a problem. Her home is being renovated, she's trying to get ready for the big block party, where she was one of the judges to give away a scholarship and her significant other Sol has gone insane.

He wants Bel to retire and for the two of them to move to the country, out of her beloved Hoboken.

The block party seems to go off ok, except for the small detail of Bel's fellow teacher, Eunice Goodson winding up dead.

It get's even stranger when Bel finds out that this conservatively dressed, Anatomy teacher spends her nights as a stripper.

Who could have done it? There certainly was a long enough list, her drug addict sister, her spurned hometown, preacher boyfriend, another teacher who seemed to spend a lot of time at the strip club. Or maybe it was the scholarship loser or her mother.

Or maybe it was just a nut.

Bel and her friends, Illuminada Gutrerrez, a private investigator and Betty Ramsey, personal assistant to the President of the college, decide to find out who would kill Eunice and stop them before they can kill again.

Highlights:

I've been lazy and didn't review all the books between the first book "The "M" Word" and this one. Overall, this series is very good.

Bel is great character. She's very serious about her teaching and can be very funny. She has new students in each of her books and is either involved in a training class or school activity. She's the kind of teacher you always hope your children will have.

Her e-mails. Every one of the books contains Bel's e-mails with different groups, How to get through menopause, how to plan her daughters wedding, how to babysit for her new grandbaby. They are funny, some of the advise will have you laughing out loud.

Her friends. Bel has a very nice relationship with her friends and their families. These people actually investigate the crimes, not just stumble into clues like many heroines do. It helps that Illuminada is a private detective.

Other supporting characters. This series has a lot of supporting help, from Illuminada's husband and daughter, Betty's new boyfriend, who's the brother of an earlier murder victim. Her son, Bel's children. They are all woven into the storylines, not big parts but enough to give you the feeling of closeness between friends and family.

The mysteries, except for this book. The mysteries have been good, somewhat complicated and took real investigation on the part of Bel and her friends.

Lowlights:

Some of their investigation techniques. I thought their dressing up like men, one in a wheel chair to go to the strip club was both ridiculous and unnecessary. They could have gone, disguised as other women with Illuminada's husband as a group. Women do go to strip clubs with their husbands and boyfriends.

Sol, Bel's boyfriend. I hate to dump on this guy, but he hasn't improved over the series. He's almost a useless character. I don't get what Bel sees in him and his constant ranting about her job and her closeness with her pupils can be very irritating.

This mystery. The mystery itself was good, but I thought the solution was a little weak and for the first time, some of their investigating techniques seemed ridiculous.

If you're reading this series, be sure and get the Anthology Book - Motherhood is Murder. A Jane Isenberg - Bel Barrett short story is included in this book, along with a Mary Daheim & Carolyn Hart, story. It does not always show up when you do a search for the series.

I really enjoyed this series.