Blue Smoke and Murder

Ms. Lowell needs to decide if she is writing fiction or an art history text book. She spends so much time on the history of Western American Art that she seems to have forgotten the plot.

And her editor needs to understand that the readers can grasp growing sexual tension without repeating every other paragraph that the heroine found the hero's body "edible."

Elizabeth Lowell is phoning it in. The characters just don't come to life, and the dialogue between the female protagonist and her love interest is laughable. I think it was supposed to be funny at least part of the time, but it just felt juvenile to me.
Other books in the St. Kilda series are pretty good, but this one just never got to humming. However, there is some interesting background on Western art and some good slams on the FLDS church.

This was an engaging thriller with interesting components. A bit heavy on the hormones; I found it hard to believe that a pair of extremely competent and independent superheros would take time out of an impending-death situation for some bump-and-giggle. Seems to me such protagonists would have been eliminated before a story could be written about them. Unfortunately there were several flukes like that, like superheros who can arrange planes, accommodations, security and more with a blink of an eye, forgetting nothing, yet not recharge a battery. Gimmee a break. Still, it was worth the read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about the St Kilda Operatives so much so that I went looking for any others. The Narrator handle the characters very well. Pity this narrator did not do the first book

Great story. I thought the narrator did a good job of handling many different parts within the story both male and female without sounding silly. Story kept my interest and I didn't want to stop listening.