Customer Reviews

Murder in a Heat Wave

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This is a fairly straightfirward little mystery. The plot is simple. Martha is a retired lawyer living in New York City's Greenwich Village. She still does freelance work, and though 74, her mind is still sharp. Unfortunetly, she discovered her next door neighbor, the President of the Co-op board, dead. Of course she gets intrigues by this and can't stop thinking about the murder.

We meet all the various neighbors, and learn why they might be the murderer. I found the characters types very sterotypical, for as a lifelong New Yorker, everyone who lives here has their own little quirks, and I thought her characters needed more personality. Everyone we meet is very flat.

I also think this book would work better in 1st person. We see the story through Martha's eyes, but I don't think a narrator is effective in this type of book- it distances the reader too much. It is also a "folksy" type of novel, and dialogue and narrative would work better if we were in Martha's head.

As a who-dun-it, the story was a little weak. It didn't take a genius to figure out who the villain really was, though she tried hard to 'confuse' the reader by introducing about a thousand unimportant, and uninteresting, characters.

IF you have nothing better to read, it will pass the time, but it is a book to be borrowed, not bought.

After ten days visiting her son and his family in California, retired attorney Martha Patterson returns to New York City after an all day trek home. Just wanting to go to sleep in her air conditioned Greenwich Village apartment, Martha finds the cooling device is broken and the hotter than a match stick heat unbearably wilting her brain. Perhaps it is jet lag, a senile moment, or just heat stroke but Martha insanely agrees to run for the cooperative board at the urging of her irate neighbors.

Management representative Rashida Grant needs to obtain a copy of the air conditioning maintenance contract to give to the board's lawyer. Her efforts to reach the board president Arnold Stern have failed and since he listed Martha in case of an emergency she calls her to enter his apartment. They find someone murdered the vilified Arnold. NYPD Homicide Detective White quickly learns that everyone detested Arnold. Though quite reluctantly, Martha begins her own inquiries.

Though the amateur sleuth elements depend too heavily on coincidence, fans will rejoice with the third Martha Patterson Greenwich Village cozy. Martha and the other tenants provide a slice of small village life within the high rise New York tenement. The action is mostly off screen, but fans will enjoy summer in the city with no spoons full of love shared by any of the cast.

Harriet Klausner