Customer Reviews

Monet Talks (A Den of Antiquity Mystery)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Antique dealer Abby Washburn falls in love with a beautiful birdcage built to look like the Taj Mahal. She bids on it at an auction and wins the birdcage, and also a bird named Monet.
Abby's customers are charmed by the bird, but soon the mynah disappears. Abby is not too concerned about the missing bird and she and her mother sneak into an exclusive ball in disguise. Her mother is the next person who disappears, soon to be followed by her best friend CJ and her husband. Abby is frantic. Not too frantic, however, to stop her adventures with fellow business owners Rob and Bob. Abby spins through one adventure after another before she discovers where all the missing people are. This is a book which is geared more towards humor than to the mystery at hand, but it is a pleasant read.

Welcome to the glory of Charleston South Carolina, were houses are big, gossip is bigger and intrigue and mystery run rampant. At least for Abigail Timberlake Washburn it does. The petite owner of an atiques shop in the heart of Charleston, just bought the Taj Mahal for ten thousand dollars. And it's occupant, a mynah names Monet. Much to her dismay her customers love the quirky bird so Abigail figures she's stuck with him, until her bird seems to fly the coop.

And then... mama Mozella disapears. And a note turns up demanding a real Monet in exchange for the talking one and Abigail's equally petite mother. Now Abigail and her trio of slueths have to solve this mystery before the feathers, and Mozella, start to fly.

***** I laughed all the way through this book. I couldn't put it down. If you need a grab you and suspense you book, (as well as a good laugh), I would definately recommend this book.*****

Reviewed by K. Blair.

Antiques dealer Abigail Timberlake Washburn outbids several people to buy a birdcage shaped like the Taj Mahal. With the cage is a Mynah bird named Monet. At first, Abigail cares more for the cage than the bird, but she soon grows to like the bird and is upset when Monet is birdnapped. The kidnappers demand a real Monet in exchange for the feathered version. Abigail doesn't have the real Monet, but the kidnappers soon strike again, this time kidnapping Abigail's mother, Mozella. Abigail works frantically to figure out what the kidnappers are really looking for as well as where they have hidden her mother.

This is a very funny book. Readers may be laughing so hard they may not notice that the book is long on humor and short on plot. The "mystery" of Abigail's mother and bird being kidnapped is ignored for long stretches as Abigail encounters one eccentric character after another. While the regular characters of C.J. and the Rob-Bob's are always amusing (although jokes about Bob's cooking are overdone), minor characters such as FBI agents that Abigail nicknames Moldy and Scowler, seem thrown in the book just for the pun of it. I'd like to see less emphasis on the eccentric characters and more emphasis on the plot.

This is a light but amusing series.

When it comes to this type of warm fuzzy mystery it is no surprise when the mystery itself is distinctly a background player. That in and of itself is not a problem because the characters are usually such that their antics make up for the lack of plot and a deep engrossing mystery. The books in this series usually follow this formula pretty closely and Mrs. Myers has created a wonderful cast that is normally able to more than make up for the sometimes-weak plot. As entertaining and fun as these characters are however, they were not able to completely make up for the almost non-existent plot in this book.

The whole thing starts out when Charleston antiques dealer Abigail Washburn pays the unbelievable sum of ten-thousand dollars at an auction for a birdcage that is built to look like the Taj Mahal. The cage comes complete with a talking mynah bird named Monet which quickly begins to charm Abby's customers with it's chatter. Then the disappearances begin as first Monet, and then Abby's mother, Abby's husband, her shop assistant and even her cat all vanish. Abby is of course shell-shocked and begins with the help of her friends the Rob-Bobs, to look for clues. Up to this point I was sure that this was going to be one of the better entries in this series, but it is at this point that the mystery fizzles.

Although Abby isn't quiet sure what happened to her husband and her assistant she is pretty sure that her mother and Monet have been kidnapped and here arises the main problem with this book. Instead of being completely out of her head with worry, Abby embarks on a leisurely search for any clues that might lead her to her mother's kidnapper. The adventures she has while making this search are hilarious and the people she meets along the way are all interesting and sometimes just downright odd but I found that I was often more worried about what had happened to Mozella than her daughter was. Abby's lack of concern was driven home again and again as she stopped to eat at almost every restaurant in Charleston. Granted, some of her eating stops were necessary to her investigation but by the time it was all said and done it seemed as if Abby was grazing rather than eating.

Fortunately, the previously developed characters along with the ones created for this story helped to save this book from being a total loss. There isn't much of a mystery and I would definitely not recommend that someone start reading this series with this book. Fans of this series will however enjoy the continuing adventures of Abby, Mozella, CJ, the Rob-Bobs and the whole crew. Charleston may never be the same again.

The plot, such as it is, gets forgotten quickly in this novel, overshadowed by the humid atmosphere of summertime Charleston and the SOBs, the antique dealers, restauranteers, etc. What intrigues the reader, in all of the novels by Tamar Myers, is not the plot, the denouement, but the journey and the people along the way. Our heroine, Abby, throws in hilarious asides, such as her lament on the perils of making love after drinking orange juice and several cups of coffee.

Despite the lack of plot (and there's no point in outlining it, such as it is), I'd read any novel with Tamar Myers' name on the cover. It may be froth, but it is very good froth.

This is the first Tamar Meyers book I've read and it will be the last. Not only is this book horribly written, but it is filled with nasty comments about anyone born north of the Mason-Dixon line, anyone who dares to go on vacation, and anyone who is not whip-thin. It seems that every other pages has a put down about one or all of the above groups. It's tiresome.

Beyond that, this story just isn't well done. The whole concept of the bird and the birdcage is interesting but both are absent for most of the book. This is too bad as the bird is the most interesting character. The heroine spends most of her time eating or complaining about food despite the fact that her beloved mother is missing. She also goes on and on about her husband who is also absent for most of the book.

The supporting character of CJ is interesting and the book would have done well to present more of her. The Rob-Bobs are also amusing although a little too far over-the-top hedging into annoying.

Meyers wraps up everything in a neat little bundle in the last few pages giving her readers no sense of satisfaction much less a chance to figure out whodunit. In sum, this book is a waste of time and paper.

This was the first book by Myers I have read; I won't bother to read another. This book is not amusing, the plot is transparent and the characters are one-dimentional. The premise is plausible enough and Charleston is always a good setting, but there is nothing after that. Our heroine's mother is kidnapped, but does she involve the police?; of course not. She does continue having tete-e-tete's with the city's socialites and dropping into the best restaurants, although she never seems to eat a meal. All in all this was one of the worse books I have read in some time. I finished it just to see if there was some saving grace somewhere. There wasn't.

First and last book I read by her. Boring, stupid and a waste of time.