Mystery author writes well but numerous flashbacks spoil the book.
591774
A well written book with two distractions. The important one  is murders in Romania which take forever to find out what actually happened and why. The second distraction is the poor judgment of the couple vacationing in Romania which caused most of their troubles they faced. The story goes from their desperate situation in Romania and then jumps to 3 months later in the United States. The rest of the book goes back and forth between the U.S.and what actually happened in Romania. It seems the author wanted to force us to read the entire book to  know the facts.
197897
Author is a good story teller but leaves some threads hanging, which is the reason for the 4 star rating.
891556
This is the second Bracebridge mystery I've read, and it will probably be the last. The historical detail in the books are fascinating; readers will pick up a lot of information about the politics of the day, what people wore, and how they lived. Still, the characters lack depth and are very predictable.
592638
Mystery stories are always intriguing.  I admire the authors for their cleverness, but there always seems to be at least one event beyond credibility.  This book avoided this fault until the end, which was not credible.  Still, it was very enjoyable except for the narrator's continuing ignorance.
3475388
A fairly good true crime story, but leaves the reader with too many unanswered questions - what did the autopsy reports say, how was a 50 year old victim mistaken for a 30 year old, why was a months-old body well preserved, why did Sharon confess the first murder when she was being investigated for the second?  Needs more forensic information to complete the story, but an enjoyable read, none the less.
3773173
Mystery written by a literary author - brilliant characterization and settings, plus some brilliant innovation on the standard mystery, crime solving format.  Unfortunately, the plotting is undermined by a series of implausible coincidences that ultimately cheapens the narrative thrust.
1354174
the beginning was fast paced and well written but the very long flashback was tedious and drawn out ending was trite and too easy.
2945130
My Kindle tells me I am 54% through this book- so far the mystery is good- typical George.  The focus is on the suspects and there are a lot of them.  The development of the detectives' stories seem to take a back seat on this one.  Lynley is back, but we don't quite know why (other than "he" sells books).  And what we really don't understand is why he takes an interest and protects the new acting superintendent; she is simply a detestable characte with no redeeming characteristic that I can see.  So far within the book, the threads of the mystery are being woven deftly, but the motivations behind Lynley's actions seem thin; so on this account, the book loses "credibility".
3122450
Great story. Better writing than most of the books on Amazon.  Would have rated it higher but there is too many flashbacks.
4223084
The author had all the elements for a good mystery/suspense except for one thing, the lack of an end or resolution to the mystery.

I find it difficult to believe the author of such noted works as Bag of Bones and The Stand would leave his readers hanging in such a manner. Fiction should be about conflict and resolution and we have the basis for the conflict. A body turns up on the beach and the only clue comes from a pack of cigarettes found on the body. We learn the man was from Colorado but very little else.

If the author had brought the story to a meaning conclusion it might well have been a classic mystery or crime thriller but unfortunately the reader is left to wonder what really happened. I would recommend a Mary Higgins Clark mystery in place of this book
2866311
In terms of plot this is the best of the four Dave Gurney books. The mystery is a deep one and the author gives clues that will allow the reader to figure out the ending. But the clues are hidden and subtle. I admit that I missed several of them. So the ending was a surprise. But a very interesting one.
  I really enjoyed the detective story part of the book. However, there's way too much psychobabble in this one. Gurney's wife, Madeleine, has become one of the most annoying characters in modern fiction. She buzzes through the story like an annoying mosquito one can't swat away, generally getting in the way and spouting vacuous psychobabble at every turn. She keeps trying to get Dave to go to a shrink to find out the deep hidden reason for his interest in investigating crimes. He ends up going and gets told "Nothing in life matters more than love". Just the kind of meaningless New Age crap Madeleine gushes over. Happily, said shrink has terminal cancer so we won't have to put up with his prattle in any future volume. Madeleine is the kind of annoying nitwit who would find that silly "Eat Prey Love" book "uplifting and profound."  One can only hope that in the next Dave Gurney book (and I certainly hope there is one!) Madeleine is side-lined. Or rendered mute.
2212323
I've always found the Faith Fairchild series enjoyable and better than the average cozy. However, in "The Body in the Kelp" too much time is spent on incidental facts instead of working on the major plot points. This causes the solution to be a little disappointing-the motives for the crimes were murky and there were too many underdeveloped story threads.

One other major flaw is the high number of typos, on almost every page it seemed. Shame on publisher Avon Twilight for letting this go through. I wish publishers would realize how unprofessional this is and how it spoils the enjoyment of reading the book.

But, even though this book starts out more promising than it finishes up, there are some clever plot devices, including clues placed in a quilt pattern. That was fun to see solved, and there is enough of a story overall to satisfy the reader.

If you enjoy the cozy mystery genre, this book is worth checking out.
2559225
The story shows a lot of promise.  I particularly like the fact that the flawed detective has a voice in his head form the war (WWI).  In who dunnits, it is important to me for the reader to have a chance to put the clues together and figure out "who dunnit".  In this story, the author keeps to himself the critical information to the very end and then foists on the reader a horribly contrived ending that takes most of the joy out of following the mystery.  All of the information that the reader has carefully collected is rendered meaningless by the conclusion. The character development is good and the reader comes to care about a couple of the characters.  The story badly needs an epilogue that gives the reader some satisfaction in this regard.
3507774
A good, fast read, suspenseful with good character development. Exciting until the last couple chapters when a glaring flaw prevented me from truly enjoying this story. How does a person get brutally killed and another beaten and stabbed into a coma and yet neither result in a police report? Yes, the male victim said he did not want a police report but that was after waking from a coma several weeks later, long after the report would have been made by the admitting hospital. And how does a murder victim with slash and stab wounds have a funeral and burial with no report of the crime? That obvious omission is what made the plot work. It also spoiled an otherwise very good book!
4327885
Chandler, the Earl of Dunraven, is obsessed with finding the thief that stole a priceless heirloom from his home during a dinner party.  He scans everyone at every party thereafter, determined to bring the thief to justice.  His watchful eye brings to his attention a lovely young lady, Millicent Blair, who is new to the ton.  Her suspicious actions makes Chandler wonder if she might have some of the answers he seeks.

This book starts out with the beginning of an excellent mystery, but quickly bogs down to pages and pages and pages of Chandler ruminating about why he is so attracted to Millicent, and Millicent determined not to fall for Chandler.  This book is only slightly more engrossing than reciting to oneself, "He loves me.  He loves me not," for hours on end.  I was bored and started skimming almost immediately.  By the time the author got back to the plot, I could care less about the resolution.

I have read other books by this author, and it is more of the same.  Ms. Grey is excellent at devising plots that intrigue, but obviously incapable of fleshing out her ideas.  This book, and all the books I have read by this author, is like a 4th grade reader, and then, disconcertingly, a sex scene is thrown in.  Next comes a 4-5 page solving of the mystery, then a chapter on getting the couple together. The end.  If one likes simple to the extreme, this is your book.  I always come away from Ms. Grey's books feeling cheated and wondering why she has not developed as a writer.
2738903
Ann Rule has written 18 true crime books, but this was the first one that was commissioned by the victim.  Sheila Blackthorne, who also had a premonition that she would die at the age of 35, asked her sister and friends to have Ann Rule write her story if anything ever happened to her.  She feared that her ex-husband, Allen, would kill her eventually.  When she was savagely murdered with her four quadruplet toddlers in the house, those close to her immediately suspected her ex-husband. This book has some flaws. Rule goes into great detail with some of the characters, but Sheila is never really defined except in terms of her relationship to Allen.  The book seems to get bogged down in repetitious details like legal proceedings in the middle, but, like all of Rule's other books, tells a good story.
2883529
My rating:  3.5 stars.

The second novel of The McKays series, opens with car crash that leaves Hannah Parker in a coma and Shayla Hardee dead under mysterious circumstances, as Brannon McKay, the hero, races to the ER to get to Hannah with a very guilty conscience. She's pregnant with his child and he had turned her away, even though she'd told him that she'd been in love with him since high school.

Again, we are bombarded with a wide cast of characters, some familiar, some not, and although I both read and reviewed the first novel in this series, I still had a difficult time remembering all the characters clearly and how their interpersonal relationships connected them. Additionally, the third person narration jumps from character to character, which, although revealing, is difficult to follow, even having read the first novel. The list of suspects in this whodunit romance is large. Apparently Shayla Hardee was blackmailing some very important men in town, and when Hannah wakes from her coma with amnesia, the issue of how much, if anything, she remembers now or will ever remember places her life in danger, and brings up the other pressing issue--will she or won't she forgive Brannon.

The suspense and mystery-upon-mystery in this novel are intriguing, and it's certainly well-written, but, as I felt about the first book in this series, I wish the author had included either a brief recap of the previous novel and/or a simple diagram or character tree showing how the many characters in this novel are inter-related. Again, be forewarned, that although the relationship between Hannah and Brannon is resolved, there still remains a killer on the loose.