Customer Reviews

Hot on the Trail

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4 star:		(1)
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Jane Isenberg's newest Bel Barrett mystery "Hot on the Trail" is a page-turner that provides both suspense and laughs. Our witty sleuth is so realistic she feels like an old friend. Many of the situations Bel finds herself in will be very familiar to women over 50, which makes them even more interesting and funny. Just don't start this book when you have a lot of work to do.

Hot on the Trail is an upbeat, fun read that brings me back to Hoboken,all those pigeons, two dead bodies, and that special brand of NJ politics! Finally, Bel and Sol get married and what a neat surprise the wedding is. Take this book on your next flight and enjoy!

Tenured Professor Bel Barrett carries a full load of classes at the River Edge Community College in Jersey City, but she takes on even more work when she intervenes to teach a memoir writing class at the Senior Center. Her live-in-lover Sol wants her to set a wedding date and start making plans but Bel finds herself putting him off because the thought of planning a wedding exhausts her. As a post-menopause woman, Bel has stopped using the estrogen potion and has trouble maintaining bladder control.

While she deals with all these demands, a student in her class Flora Tomaselli tells Bel that fellow student Dom is dead. He went up to the roof in his pajamas, fell down, and froze to death. Flora also thinks her father was murdered by her uncle Emilio who owed him a large sum of money and wants Bel to prove it. Bel who always comes alive during criminal investigations agrees but Emilio has an airtight alibi and there are suspects closer to home.

Bel Barrett does for Hoboken what Stephanie Plum does for Trenton. This is an upbeat amateur sleuth tale in which the major characters are in their fifties. Jane Isenberg makes it clear that life does not stop once a person reaches the half century mark; it just gets better. If the heroine is any example that is certainty true because she has a lust for life and an appreciation of it that younger people don't have. HOT ON THE TRAIL is a charming romantic amateur sleuth mystery.

Harriet Klausner

I have read the entire series and loved it funny, engaging and keeps you reading till the end. The book arrived quickly and in great condition.

"Hot on the Trail" fulfills all the criteria for a satisfying read: characters with distinct and engaging personalities, a suspect-filled plot that develops intriguing byways, witty dialogue to move the story forward while deepening the reader's understanding of the dynamics among the story's cast. While these characteristics are highly enjoyable in all of Jane Isenberg's delightful Bel Barrett series, "Hot on the Trail" also successfully and empathetically explores the processes of aging, cultural alterations, and the many definitions of family. Isenberg's selection of pigeon racing as a crucial background element of the story adds interesting detail that also illuminates some ingredients of a murder. An evening spent with "Hot on the Trail" offers many satisfactions, whether or not you have met Bel Barrett and company before. Enjoy!

I haven't really enjoyed this series for the past few installments. However, I did enjoy this one. And that's because the story wasn't overfilled with the annoying sidekicks, Illuminada and Betty.

Both characters have outworn themselves in this series, having turned into a couple of unlikeable, stereotypical caricatures. Illuminada, the impatient Cuban, can't get through a paragraph without throwing out a "chiquita" and looking at her watch. Betty, the controlling African-American, can't get through a paragraph without throwing out a "girlfriend" and barking out orders. These two got old a long time ago, and the series is just so much more enjoyable when Bel is interacting with Sol, Ma, Sofia, Wendy, her kids and her students.

Hopefully the author has realized this and the series will continue in a positive manner, as it did with this installment.

Hot On The Trail is the eighth book in Jane Isenberg's Bel Barrett mystery series. Bel Barrett is a women in her fifties who works as a New Jersey community college professor. In this instalment she gets more than expected (but not really) when she agrees to teach an extra evening writing class for seniors.

Like previous instalments someone dies; in this case it turns out to be one of her students, racing pigeon master, 83 year old Dom Tomaselli. His body shows up frozen in the snow next to the house he shares with his children. An apparent accident. Dom's daughter, Flora (whose also one of Bel's students), doesn't think it was an accident and she's pretty sure her Uncle killed him over a long term debt. Bel soon finds out he is not the only suspect.

Bel doesn't work alone on her search for the killer. Her side kicks, I mean best friends Illuminada and Betty are there pretty much every step of the way. Occasionally, she calls on her fiancé Sol Hecht for back up. The characters didn't stop there and this is one of the regrets for this book. Lots of names are mentioned in the first ten pages. The swamp made it hard to keep them straight and to remember who is who. It didn't get any better as more and more names were introduced throughout. Each chapter started off with an email or an excerpt from one of her student's memoirs. This just added to the who is who confusion.

"Who cares?" was a common thought as I read through the chapter of her surprise wedding. I really didn't care who was sitting with who or knew who. It was a stagnant stop to what little momentum there was to the story.

When a book is compared to the likes of Evanovich's Plum series I expect it to be an easy, funny read with some suspense. This book had none of these qualities. It took me three weeks to read while Evanovich's are usually done within two days. This story was dry and drowned out with lifeless characters. The interesting facts about pigeon racing (like the fastest pigeon clocked was 92mph, 49 mph faster than the fastest horse) are lost and seem like they were just stuck in for prosperity's sake. This book is not high on my list for recommendation.

This Review was Originally Posted at www.linearreflections.com