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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The perfect book for this night owl,
By Pat Browning "Author of ABSINTHEOF MALICE" (Yukon, OK USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Paper Detective (Hardcover)
I opened THE PAPER DETECTIVE about midnight, thinking I'd take a quick look before going to bed. Four hours later I was still turning pages. I know better than to stay up all night, but I couldn't rest until Paisley Sterling got out of her latest predicament.
This is the third book in the Paisley Sterling series, but my first to read. It has everything I needed and wanted in a book that night: characters I can like, a Southern tone and setting, a story with twists and turns. Paisley is 42, with creaky knees and a contrary streak. She gets into dangerous situations more by accident than design. She's back on the family farm after her husband's disappearance during a revolution and her daughter Cassie is home from university for the Christmas holidays, all to the delight of Paisley's mother Anna, the eternal Southern Belle. Paisley writes hard-boiled detective stories under the pen name of Leonard Paisley. No problem, until now. A phone call from her literary agent in New York seems more of an annoyance than anything, but it sets a nightmare in motion. A magazine has offered $10,000 for an interview with "Leonard." Paisley convinces retired police chief Bert Atkins to impersonate Leonard. Again, no problem, until certain nasty types read the published article, which includes a color photo of Bert "looking handsome and sleuthlike in his black turtleneck and tweed jacket." Even worse, a PR klutz has posted a photo of Bert's secluded lakeside cabin on a Web page. When someone tries to kill Bert, Paisley concludes that her paper detective has a flesh-and-blood enemy. Her latest book was inspired by information left on the hard drive of a used computer bought by Cassie. Paisley's reexamination of files on the disc sends her off to the army base outside of town. Before she can say "A-ha!" Bert has disappeared and she's running for her life from members of a covert paramilitary operation. I didn't mind losing sleep to read this one. I'll read again and again, while I'm waiting for the next one in this lovely series.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Icy Adventure,
By
This review is from: The Paper Detective (Hardcover)
Paisley Sterling is back in her most exciting adventure to date. When her daughter Cassie buys her a used laptop to replace the one she lost in her last adventure, she discovers that the previous owner didn't entirely clean it out and there were intriguing letters left on it. Adapting some phrases from the letter, she writes her latest mystery using the pen name of Leonard Paisley, since her publisher contends that people don't want hard-boiled mysteries written by a middle-aged woman who used to write children's novels. But now Pen and Ink magazine wants to do a feature story on Leonard and she has to find a Leonard. She decides that the former police chief of a neighboring county, Bert Atkins, who had taken early retirement after being shot, would be the perfect Leonard and since his stepson was the new chief and was dating her daughter she figured she had a good chance of talking him into it. He agrees to impersonate Leonard and they go to Nashville where the interview goes well, with the exception of Paisley getting jealous of the reporter flirting with "Leonard". But a few days after they return home, Bert calls Paisley with the news that someone tried to kill him and asks her what she has done. Paisley begins to investigate what is going on and quickly finds herself under attack from a militia group, rogue soldiers and her traitorous heart, as she battles her growing attraction to Bert.When she tries to infiltrate the militia camp to gather evidence, she realizes that she is in over her head and ends up in a desperate race for her life across a snow covered, bitterly cold Kentucky forest. She soon finds that the only thing standing between thousands of people dying in a terrorist attack and the terrorist is her. With plenty of action that races across the page at breakneck speed, this is a breathtaking look at the side effects of the new, scary world that we find ourselves living in now. Sims takes the peaceful backdrop of a snowy Kentucky countryside and adds an element of terror that seems worse in such a setting and highlights the fact that terror can strike anywhere, not just big cities. You will be staying up all night to finish this roller coaster ride.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Paisley's third adventure is a great addition.,
By
This review is from: The Paper Detective (Hardcover)
When her daughter Cassie buys her a used laptop to replace the one she lost, Paisley discovers that there are some intriguing letters left on it which she uses in her latest mystery. Her publisher contends that people don't want hard-boiled mysteries written by a middle-aged woman who used to write children's novels so she writes under the pseudonym, Leonard Paisley. When an important magazine want to do a feature story on Leonard, they don't want to interview Paisley, they want to interview Leonard -- and her agent wants a Leonard - quickly. Cassie is dating the new police chief, Danny who had taken over after his stepfather, Bert. Bert had taken early retirement after being shot and Paisley thinks that he might make the perfect Leonard.
Driving out to his isolated cabin to meet him, Paisley's car breaks down in the snow and she tries to walk out, breaking all the rules of surviving in the snow - which she puts down to being "woozy from the bump". Bert saves her and from their meeting, their is a mutual attraction. He agrees to be Leonard and the interview goes off well, although Cassie surprises herself by being jealous when the interviewer flirts with him. Things start heating up when someone tries to shoot Bert and then Bert tries to shoot Paisley but that was an accident - or was it. Paisley is warned off by the law, her mother and Bert himself, but she stubbornly continues to try to find the answer to all her questions. Is it Bert she should be afraid of, someone else? Where does the laptop fit in? When her investigations bring retaliation that affects her whole family, Horatio, her mother's "friend", steps in to protect Paisley's mother and her family. He is a retired intelligence man who knows all the tricks - but the bad things keep happening and Paisley is in the centre of the maelstrom. In this the third of the Paisley Stirling novels, we get to know more of Paisley's back story and also her character's contradictions. All this fear and chaos happens in a backdrop of the slower paced Middle America "down home" family life ‑ Paisley's niche in her family and her connection to it is an important part of who Paisley is and is very well written. I personally love her disarming ability to laugh at herself in the midst of her all too human reactions - to her mother, her agent. Aggie (Agatha Christie), the dog that rules the household, would certainly drive anyone to distraction and Paisley's relationship with the dog causes quite a few LOL moments that alleviate the tension. Thus when the tension returns, it is more tightly wound as the book races to the finish. My one small quibble with this book was that Paisley blunders into a lot of dangerous situations without thinking the consequences through or totally ignoring the advice of other, more knowledgeable mentors. It's as if she thinks she knows better than anyone else and they just worry too much and she can't be told -- but once in the dangerous situation, she handles it in a way that is totally realistic and not unbelievably "super human" for an ordinary fiesty lady with more courage than sense! This story is set in winter in western Kentucky on her family's farm and the local area. The cold, the snow and surviving in that environment is not only a character of the story, but is so well depicted, you feel as cold as they are - a fine feat in the middle of an Australian summer.
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