Customer Reviews

Memories Can Be Murder : The Fifth Charlie Parker Mystery (Charlie Parker Mysteries)

5 star:		(3)
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When Charlie Parker was a teenager her parents died in a plane crash. Being spoiled and preoccupied with her prom, Charlie thought they were going on a vacation. However, years later Charlie learns that her parents were actually going on a business trip sponsored by her father's employer the Scandia Corporation. Instead of pilot error or mechanical failure, Charlie finds out that a bomb blew up her parent's plane. Scandia Corporation squashed the investigation.

Charlie feels the need to learn why her parents were murdered. Obsessed by the incident, Charlie reacts the way she always acts when she needs to know something. She starts her own investigation. She begins with her father's ex-secretary, who sends her to a possible informant. However, before they meet, an assassin murders Charlie's pigeon. Someone ransacks Charlie's office and Hannah's home seeking information they believe Charlie possesses. In spite of the increasing danger, the tenacious Charlie continues her inquiries wondering what the unknown assailants think she owns.

The fifth Charlie Parker mystery is the best of the series as the story line combines an emotional look inside Charlie with a well-designed who-done-it. Charlie's romance with her live-in lover helps relieve some of the growing tension surfaced by her investigation. MEMORIES CAN BE MURDER demonstrates Connie Shelton's talent as the audience will find a night with Charlie is an exciting evening.

Memories can be Murder - This is the 5th in the Charlie Parker Series and my 5th as well. This was the best to date it started out slowly as Charlie finds out that the plane accident that killed both her parents 15 years earlier may not have been accident after all. So Charlie starts poking around asking questions as any good PI would do but as she does people seem to be dying and other out of the ordinary things seem to be happening all around her. What starts out as simply asking questions turns into a full blown spy novel worthy of James Bond . If your thinking of reading a Charlie Parker book don't start with Memories can be Murder read a couple of the earlier books first you need to know Charlie a bit so you can understand her thinking and motives before diving into the book but make sure you read it's Awesome.

Two events conspire to put Charlie Parker on an investigation of her parents' death. The first was that her neighbor, who helped raise her after her parents' death, confides that their plane crash was not an accident, but was the result of a bomb which had been planted on the plane. The second event is that Charlie's fiance, Drake, will soon be coming from Hawaii to move in with her. This necessitates rearranging some of her things to make room for Drake and her discovery of some of her father's old papers in the attic. Her father had been an employee of Sandia Corporation and had been privy to some confidential government information. Working on the theory that her father had some incriminating evidence about someone at his job, Charlie begins interviewing his former co-workers and looking for answers to her questions about the plane crash. Bad things begin happening to Charlie and the people she talks to, and the net begins to tighten around Charlie and the murderer. This is another good entry in the Charlie Parker series.

I found MEMORIES CAN BE MURDER to be an engrosing but predictable story. Charlie Parker (not to be confused with Charlie Plato of CHAPS created by Meg Chittenden), 30-ish and newly engaged, is hesitant to set a wedding date to fiance Drake as they have only known each other a short time. However, Charlie and Drake have agreed to live together, and he is in the process of moving from Hawaii to Charlie's home in Albuquerque. While making room for Drake's things, Charlie discovers several boxes of her father's papers in the attic, which cause her to relive old memories of her parents who died in a plane crash.

Charlie learns she didn't comprehend much at the time of their deaths, and she starts investigating. It soon becomes obvious that someone has something to hide, as much of the information regarding the plane crash has disappeared. What's more, someone who has info to give to Charlie is killed right in front of her eyes.

While engrosing, much of the plot is predictable. As soon as Charlie took her father's boxes of papers next door to spread out in a neighbor's empty room, I just knew that something was going to happen to Charlie's house. I kept cringing at the end of each chapter, expecting her house to blow up with her fiance in it. So when the expected did happen, it was nice to find that no one was killed after all. Also predictable was the bad guy's identity, which eliminated much of the suspense.

In spite of the predictability, I very much enjoyed watching Charlie's relationship with Drake develop. I'm looking forward to the next book in this series.

I am thoroughtly enjoying Connie Shelton's mysteries. I believe each gets better than the last. I have lived in the northern New Mexico area (not Albuquerque) and feel she has created an interesting and believable character. I am reading them from 1 on and am up to #8.

SO FAR I HAVE READ 6 OF THIS SERIES OF CHARLEY PARKER SERIES AND ENJOYED EVERYONE OF THEM AND WOULD GIVE THEM A )FIVE STAR).

Nice light reading. Hopefully this book, while enjoyable, doesnt serve as the first hint that the series is going to dissolve into mndless cutesy fluff