Customer Reviews

O Little Town of Maggody: 2An Arly Hanks Mystery

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

 

 

A country and western music star is scheduled to visit his claimed home town and visit his dear old great-aunt. The usual Maggody misadventures and murders familiar to all ardent Hessians take place.
I think this is a series that gets better as it goes on. There is a certain crudity and dependence on cliches and stereotypes in the earlier character drawing. The fat girl Delia is greedy; the preacher is a hypocrite. The later ones have more subtlety.
"She had her cat, Pussy Toes, her apartment in a quiet neigborhood, her meetings of the genealogical society, her knitting projects for nieces and nephews, and her annual vaction to a family-run hotel in Mexico where she remained drunk out of her mind for ten days straight." You might accuse Hess of making fun of alcoholism in that portrait of Miss Vetchling but it has a certain style and sharpness.

ISBN 0451404572 - You know those people who tell sort of bad jokes and find themselves wildly amusing, while all you can do is roll your eyes? That's this Joan Hess book for me. And surely someone out there finds her amusing, because someone's buying the books - but I'm just rolling my eyes.

Arly's always got her hands full in Maggody, but this Christmas things are getting a little more hectic. The town is slowly dying, but there's hope on the horizon in the person of Matt Montana, Maggody's own prodigal son. He's serving his own career and the people of Maggody would benefit from a bit of tourism... so Matt's on his way to town. The problem is that Matt's Aunt Adele has gone missing. Arly is also trying to riddle out the moving city limits sign, deal with Dahlia's jealousy and suspicions about what Kevin's up to, the return of Hammett and a myriad of other goings-on in Maggody.

Arly Hanks reminds me of Isle of Dogs, but not quite as awful. In fact, not awful at all, just... dumb. The same "this is funny, really, you should laugh" feeling runs through both books, but they're just not - to me. The characters are so stereotypical that they're miles beyond amusing and closer to stupid. If you enjoy the tongue-in-cheek style, lightly mocking the mystery genre, you're going to enjoy Hess, and fans of Arly Hanks will like the book far more than I. Hess herself gave me a quote I couldn't pass up: "Writers ...they're so goofy nobody cares what they do."

- AnnaLovesBooks

I have been reading all of the Arly Hanks books in order and at first they were there cute little novels with charming characters from AR. This one I actually gave up on. Everything has become a cliche and just overdone.

I am sorry Ms. Hess - normally I love your work but this one I just could not get through.

I wanted to like this story, but all the characters, with the exception the the lead character, sound exactly the same. It had a few cute moments, but generally I had trouble finishing. I give it two stars.

This poorly written book is a murder mystery in which no less than 3 people turn up dead. It's part of a series about Arly Hanks, a divorced woman in her 30s who is the entire police force over a tiny southern town named Maggody.

When Matt Montana, an up-and-coming country singer claims he was born in Maggody and plans to go home for Christmas, things start to happen. The town residents -- portrayed as one stereotyped country boob after another-- get celebrity fever as each of them greedily schemes how to make money off of Maggody being Matt Montana's birth place. Along the way, 3 people end of up dead and while I forced myself to finish the book, only 2 of the deaths were explained. Unbelievably, the third death was not cleared up.

Here's why I hated the book. First, there are no sympathetic characters in this book-- not even the protagonist, Arly Hanks. A list of a few of the southern hicks that populate the town are an obese newlywed (many jokes about how many chins she has) who fears her husband is stepping out on her, a moonshiner constantly in need of a bath complete with a large pet pig, a slick, hypocritical, greedy minister, a convenience store clerk with crooked teeth, beady eyes, as well as a low IQ, and a henpecked husband. The main thrust of the humor in the book is to portray southerners in every negative, stereotypical way possible. I don't mind some politically incorrect jokes, but this got to be too much. The book would have been a lot better if at least a few of the residents of Maggody were decent, sincere people. Every town no matter how big or small (be it Manhatten or Maggody) has its share of fools, but there are also wonderful, genuine denizens no matter how thick their accents may be.

To add to matters, Arly Hanks was little more than an after thought in the book. It was clear she was recovering from an unhappy divorce, but almost NOTHING happens in her life in the course of this book. No love interest, no good friends, heck, even her mother was a bumpkin who tended to lecture her.

The final insult to the reader is that the third death is not explained AND the author is aware of this. At the end of the book, she has Arly saying to a police detective from another town that while the third death looks suspicious, it's not under her jurisdiction so she wouldn't pursue it. What??!! I feel cheated! Even a bad murder mystery ties up all the loose ends.

The book fails on every level and I don't plan on reading another Joan Hess mystery. Life is too short to risk investing time in another novel by this author.

Despite the small town of Maggody's inability to pull itself into the sophisticated world of today. Arly manages just fine. When a country music star and his entourage arrive for a Christmas special, things get kinda weird. Not to worry though, Arly has everything under control. Disappearing people and dying mannequins? Do not miss this Christmasy murder mystery.