19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, November 9, 2010
"I Shall Not Want" is a fun cozy mystery. This book is the second in the series, but you don't need to read the first book in order to understand this one. However, this book promptly revealed who the murderer was in the previous novel, so you'll want to read the first novel before this one if you're intending to read it.
There's an underlying humor to this mystery, and the characters were engaging and interesting. I figured out whodunit long before the characters did (due to understanding mystery forms, not because the characters overlooked obvious clues), but the writing was good enough to keep me reading and enjoying it.
While the "police stuff" was generally good (and safely vague), I did wonder about the scene where two men entered a dark, apparently deserted morgue to set the corpse of a murder victim on an examination table and promptly left. Wouldn't they need to process the body (paperwork) and refrigerate it until it was time to examine the body?
Though the main characters were a church secretary, a rabbi, and an atheist police detective, there was very little religious content. Certainly, none of the characters tried to convert each other.
I was reading an advanced reader copy, so this may be changed in the final version. However, several times the rabbi referred to God as "Jehovah" in his casual conversations. First, that's not the Hebrew spelling of God's name. Second, he also referred to God as "Yahweh" once, near the end. Third, Jews--even those not highly devout--don't casually refer to God by His personal name. They even write "G-d" rather than "God" when referring to Him. Also, when asked to pray before the Thanksgiving dinner was eaten, the rabbi gave a very Christian-style prayer rather than a Jewish one. Granted he's a cool character with a mysterious past, but I didn't find him very convincing as a devout Jewish believer let alone the leader of a synagogue.
There was no sex and minimal gore (mainly just references to pools of blood). There were a few uses of both explicit and "he cussed"-style bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable novel, especially to those who like dogs and mysteries.
This book was an advanced reader copy provided for review purposes by the publisher.
Reviewed by Debbie from Genre Reviews
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A riveting mystery that will keep the pages turning, December 10, 2010
A dog can be quite the gift. But not much of one when it's paired with murder. "I Shall Not Want" tells of a string of murders of homeless people as they were granted a dog by a charity organization. Joseph Tyler and Cindy find themselves charged with getting behind the meaning of these murders, a challenge that doesn't seem as it will be easy, as the truth has plenty of reason to keep itself hidden. "I Shall Not Want" is a riveting mystery that will keep the pages turning.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fun story!, July 25, 2011
I SHALL NOT WANT charms the reader especially someone who belongs to a religious organization. The main character is a church secretary who gets entangled in a series of murders happening citywide! The author deftly carries the characters thru this mystery novel with a light wit and allows the reader to become a behind-the-scenes onlooker!
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