Customer Reviews

Killer Commute (Charlie Greene Mysteries)

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Long Beach, California literary agent Charlie Greene looks forward to her week-long vacation away from an assortment of naughts and the KILLER COMMUTE to her Beverly Hills office. Last year's trip to Vegas tuned into a fiasco (see NOBODY DIES IN A CASINO). This time heeding the advice of her nosy elderly neighbor Mrs. Beesom, Charlie plans to stay home and chill.

However, on the eve of her vacation Charlie and Mrs. Beesom discover the murdered corpse of Jeremy Fielder. The lead detectives Amuller and Mason suspect Charlie, whose CA (criminal activity not commercial activities) includes involvement in several homicides in several different western states. Adding to the confusion is no paper trail seems to exist for Jeremy and his neighbors soon realize they no nothing about him except he always seemed to help them. Trying to salvage her vacation and remove the cops from her life, Charlie begins her own brand of inquiries not cognizant that a killer will murder again if necessary.

KILLER COMMUTE is the usual Charlie Greene amateur sleuth tale filled with irony and amusing nonsense that feels real. This makes for a fun reading experience. Charlie, her neighbors, her daughter, and the cats make the "compound" seem genuine by adding to the fervor of a wild ride in suburbia. Marlys Millhiser imbues her prime player with a sarcastic (at least with her internal witty asides) satirical look at life that makes Charlie seem more like her audience than most protagonists do. With outrageous humor and a penchant for deadly vacations, this Greene entry is one of the better novels in an entertaining on-going series.

Harriet Klausner

When California literary agent Charlie Green begins her vacation by shutting off the phone and putting out the cat, she also finds the body of her neighbor slumped in his SUV. Charlie has a track record for stumbling over bodies, so she automatically becomes the prime suspect. This in turn leads to a wild ride through suburban Long Beach with a killer stalking her condo complex. Add dangerous secrets, hidden cash, a strategically placed bomb, a temporary loss of hearing, and a stint in jail, there is no getting around the fact the for Charlie, vacations can be murder! Killer Commute is a compelling, dynamic, page-turner of a mystery from first to last!

Since I wrote a bad review for Nobody Dies In A Casino, I thought I ought to write a good one for this book, since I really enjoyed it. (I still don't like the casino one though.) I read this in one night so I know I liked it. I like Libby too and would like to see her in more of these books. She's almost as funny as her mom. Read it...it's a little farfetched in spots but who cares if you are enjoying the story!

This really is a pretty long, boring commute. The traffic doesn't move much, and the road takes the reader through a whole lot of over-complicated and over-decorated scenery. Not to overdo the metaphor (but why not? Marlys Millhiser certainly does) I felt as though I were stuck in traffic, looking out my car window while a group of strangers hurried past me. I didn't care about them, and they didn't stop long enough to include me in the events. Add to that a gimmicky prose style, a virtually unintelligible dialogue, and a synthetic and twisted plot--and you have this novel: a perfectly awful journey that couldn't end fast enough. Avoid the drive.