Plot:
New York movie critic Mitch Berger goes to sleepy New England Dorset and falls in love with a secluded carriage house, where he plans to hide and grieve his wife's death. When there is a series of murders, surrounding Dorset's old moneyed elites, Mitch comes into contact with State Trooper Desiree Mitry, the highest ranking African American woman in the New England state police. They solve the mystery, fall in love, and Mitch's fool butt almost gets his ass killed!
This summer I decided to move away from all of the sci-fi, romance novels that I'd been consuming throughout the spring and move into mysteries. But not like creepy old man dead in the closet mysteries (I'll get to those soon enough), but cozy mysteries that are really interesting and fun to read, but not so much scary.
I started with Charlaine Harris' Real Murders.
Yea, you might remember her from the Sookie Stackhouse novels and True Blood. If you've read those novels then you know how quickly Harris becomes super annoying and the quality of the story begins to suffer. *cough*Dead and Gone*cough* She just has a way of turning okay characters into the most annoying people you could ever imagine reading. (By book 9 I hated Sookie almost as much as I hated Bella Swan). So I gave her Aurora Teagarden stories a try with more than a little trepidation. But, I have to say that the first and second books really weren't that bad. I'm currently going through that series (slowly) but I got sidetracked with Handler's Berger & Mitry mysteries.
The Cold Blue Blood by David Handler was recommended on a message board/interracial fiction site. The series focuses on the developing relationship between Mitch and Des and, in my opinion, an inordinate amount of murders in such a small New England town.
So why am I recommending it?
Honestly, this shit is hilarious. Somehow Handler has a way of writing two characters who are just real enough that you think you might know someone like them, but just odd enough that you might not.
Mitch is like a "real life" version of The Critic . Fat, Jewish, totally nerdy, and only the tiniest bit pathetic. And not bald (plus!).
Des... Oh I just don't know how to describe her, but I'd love to see how Handler envisioned her. But in a word, she's AWESOME! even though she talks kinda funny...
Anyway, ch-ch-ch-check it out...
