Customer Reviews

Organize Your Corpses (A Charlotte Adams Mystery)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Charlotte Adams has returned home to Woodbridge, NY, to set up shop as a professional organizer. She's just dumped her cheating ex-fiance, and although her closets are organized, her life is anything but.

When Miss Helen "Hellfire" Henley calls to hire her to organize Henley House, she accepts against her friend's protests because she made Charlotte's life a living hell back in high school at St. Jude's. When Charlotte arrives, she discovers Miss Henley wants her to find some important documents in the accumulated junk left. So instead of just tossing the junk, she's going to have to sort through each and every piece.

That night Miss Henley calls summoning her to Henley House. Charlotte does not go as she's busy. The next day Miss Henley is found murdered at the house. Charlotte feels responsible and begins investigating.

Plus Detective Sergeant Pepper Monahan was the lead. She was Charlotte's best friend in school, but they've had a falling out and Pepper has it in for her.

Can Charlotte make sense of the mess at Henley House while keeping Pepper from putting her in jail?

This is the first book I've read by this author. It won't be the last. This is a fabulous cozy series that is a fast, easy read. The characters are fun. I enjoyed the organizing tips because they were blended into the story wonderfully. The strife between Pepper and Charlotte added to the intensity.

I highly recommend this book.

This was a fun new series with an interesting cast of characters and a plot that left you guessing until the end.

I only had two complaints -- there were a number of errors in the book (mainly words being left out of sentences and spelling), and I don't feel like the animosity between Charlotte and Pepper was really ever explained. But I guess that's for later books.

Looking forward to the next installment!

After dumping her two-timing fiancé and throwing his ring into the river, Charlotte Adams leaves the city to return to her hometown Woodbridge, New York. She sets up shop as a free lance "Professional organizer", who straightens out other people's messes at home and in businesses. She is shocked when Miss Helen "Hellfire" Henley hires her to clean up Henley House in order to find some missing documents. Miss Henley made Charlotte's student life a living hell when she was her teacher at St. Jude's.

At Henley House, Charlotte learns that the last resident was Randolph Henley. She and Helen come to an agreement and a check is provided. That night Helen demands Charlotte go see her at Henley House, but the organizer says no. The next morning Charlotte finds Helen dead. The police determine a murder occurred and Pepper, once Charlotte's best friend, thinks Charlotte is the prime suspect. Feeling guilty, Charlotte investigates starting with a visit to Miss Olivia, Helen's wealthy brain damaged sister. Her good intentions go astray as the cops wonder if Charlotte is a deranged killer.

This is the first book in a new series that is fun to read. The story line focuses on the murder investigation predominantly that of the amateur sleuth but also interweaves into the plot organizing tips in the tone of observations by the heroine. Charlotte is a strong person who tries to help people and is bold enough to play cat and mouse with a killer if that also helps people. Mary Jane Maffini provides a first rate well organized whodunit.

Harriet Klausner

Mary Jane Maffini is a well-establish writer of mysteries in Canadian settings. This book, the first of a new series, and set in a small American town, appears to be her novelistic attempt to escape what is sometimes called "the beaver pile" up here in the Frozen North. On the basis of this outing, I think Ms. Maffini has made a successful transition--and good luck to her!

Ms. Maffini is no Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers, but she quite obviously is a competent and professional purveyor of cozy mysteries. She knows her business and she has cobbled together a perfectly acceptable and breezy book. She is also intimately familiar with the conventions of the cozy mystery, so familiar, in fact, that she makes riffs on those conventions and, more importantly, on the expectations of her readers.

"Organize Your Corpses" is the sort of book for which a published spoiler would, for once, be an actual disaster. I shall say no more than that I was surprised by not just one but two of Ms. Maffini's characters. What happens is not so shocking it itself, but so highly uncharacteristic of cozy mysteries that I was caught off guard. I admit that the rabbits that come out of Maffini's authorial hat are not half so astonishing as the one in "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," but they'll do--oh, yes, they'll do.

Speaking of riffs on cozy mystery conventions, and since the subject has already come up in an earlier Amazon review, it might be noted that a common convention in American cozies is that the always intrepid heroine has a close-by a female friend who was her best buddy from their schooldays. In a nice riff on the tradition and expectation, just such a character appears in this book--but she and the heroine have had a full-fledged falling out. They can't stand each other. And it is this very mutual loathing that the author cleverly uses to support even hoarier cozy mystery convention: the imbecilic refusal of the heroine to call the cops when she should be doing exactly that.

(I see that at least one reader is agitated by the fact that author Maffini never explains how or why the two former best friends became enemies. The second book of the series is soon to be published. I, for one, hope that this particular mystery becomes a running thread, never to be solved.)

"Organize Your Corpses" is a perfectly satisfactory cozy mystery of the American variety--not a masterpiece, but well-constructed and entertaining. On that basis, I'd normally give it four stars. But owing to the unexpected turns inserted into the stereotyped material, I'll knock that up to five.

a wonderful one while enjoying meeting all the characters in the first volume of her new series. Since other reviewers have explained the plot, etc., I would just like to say that I enjoyed this book to the extent that I will soon be the proud owner of all this author's other titles (not necessarily an easy-accomplished feat!).

Am I looking forward to volume 2--you bet!!

(Other favorite authors include: Carolyn Haines, Lee Child, Michele Martinez, Libby Hellman, Evan Marshall, Jan Burke,(just to name a few).

Am I the only one to notice the similarity to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None)? I can't say more without doing a spoiler. Charlotte Adams belongs to the dim damsel tradition, in that she frequently goes running off to the last place she should. The plot device of having her enemies with Pepper, the investigating detective, gives Charlotte an excuse for doing everything herself, but the basis for their relationship isn't explained, so it never feels authentic. The book needs copy editing.

This was the first book I have read by this author - I found it to be a very pleasant, well-"organized" cozy mystery. The protagonist was likeable, the characters varied, and it had a plot which clipped along at a reasonable pace. While I am not the least bit organized, nor can I even a imagine a person whose closets or home have nothing out of place, Charlotte Adams was a fun new character for me, and I hope to see more of her in the future !! Perhaps I can learn a few things...

This was the first book I'd picked up by this author and I was really delighted by it--a first-rate whodunnit of the cozy variety. I'll definitely be reading her other books.

This mystery has interesting and distinctive characters, a plot that's fairly intricate yet easy to follow, and a truly surprising resolution. All wrapped around a professional organizer who keeps getting diverted from her to-do list by murder and mayhem. It's a good choice for when you want a quick read that's light and entertaining.

I like this series a lot. It has a likeable heroine and it has a lot of humor. I like the idea that she is a professional organizer although her own life is hardly organized at the moment. There are questions left unanswered but they will probably be answered in later books.

The story moves along. Charlotte is hired by her old schoolteacher to sort through some papers, but Charlotte finds her dead before she even starts organizing the mess. The local police woman is an old enemy of hers and is determined to put Charlotte in jail for the crime (whether she did it or not!)

There are a lot of twists to story and I'm not sure all was explained satisfactorily but it was such a good story that I didn't care. I never guessed the ending like I do in a lot of books. A great story and a great set of characters in it. I mostly only read cozy mysteries and this is definitely one of the best series I've read.

Professional organizer Charlotte Adams can't afford to be picky about clients which is why she agrees to help teacher Helen "Hellfire" Henley with a project. Miss Henley made high school life miserable for many a student including Charlotte and her friends. Still, Charlotte takes her on as a client, hoping it will give her some much needed publicity. Sure enough, Charlotte gets a lot of publicity - the wrong kind - when she discovers Miss Henley's dead body and becomes the number one suspect in the murder. Charlotte works frantically to clear her name before she is sent to jail. She'll have her hands filled as the murderer has more than one trick up his/her sleeve.

"Organize Your Corpses" is a pretty good cozy mystery (the first in the Charlotte Adams series). Having Charlotte be a professional organizer is a good set up for a mystery series and author Mary Jane Maffini does a nice job with it, including giving organizing tips at the beginning of each chapter. The murder victim is an ex-teacher who made a lot of enemies which provides a lot of suspects and the reader will have fun trying to guess who the killer is. Maffini has some Agatha Christie like qualities in her writing that she uses quite skillfully - originally Miss Henley asks Charlotte to search for a missing document, a plot line that is Christie through and through although Maffini takes a delightful u-turn with that plot. Also like in Christie's books, there are plenty of red herrings and plot twists including a doozy of one that will shock readers. The characters are all well done including Charlotte who is a very unorganized professional organizer; her best friends Jack and Sally; and even her dogs Truffle and Sweet Marie. Part of what makes the characters work so well is that they've known each other for a long time, having gone to high school together. However, it's a bit disappointing that Maffini only hints at the reasons why policewoman Pepper and Charlotte, once best friends, are now enemies (I'd have liked a few more scenes with Charlotte and Pepper interacting). Charlotte's character can be a bit judgmental and I'd love to know Pepper's side of things.

"Organize Your Corpses" is a pretty good cozy mystery and I look forward to reading other books in the series.