Freezer Burn

By: Gayle Carline

Narrated by: Cynthia Wallace

When house cleaner-turned-detective Peri Minneopa agrees to clean a former client's freezer, she discovers a severed hand inside, wearing an expensive ring. Now she must find the rest of the body and keep her client, a Dean Martin fanatic, out of jail.

©2012 Gayle Carline (P)2013 Gayle Carline

Funny, Clever Mystery

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed Ms. Carline's writing. She is funny and the "whodunit" was very clever. I really enjoyed her characters, especially Benny, who idolizes Dean Martin.

If you like cozy mysteries, you'll enjoy this. I'm on to the next one in the series.

Read this one in print!

I'll make this short. The premise of the actual book is clever: a middle-aged woman who has run a cleaning service starts a new career as a private investigator. It helps that she has friends in the police and coroner's departments. One of her first clients is a strange young man whom she has known from when she cleaned his mother's house. He hires her to find something missing in his collection of Dean Martin mementoes, and she discovers a woman's hand, sporting a huge diamond ring, in his freezer.

Although I doubt that this book would win any awards, it was clever. I was liking it up to the time that I finally gave up listening, because the narration was just insufferable. I would like to find something positive to say about it, but I just can't. In normal, natural conversation, various words get emphasized without much awareness. And that's the flow we're used to. I think this narrator managed to distort that natural flow in every single sentence she read. Words got the emphasis in the strangest places. It was beyond frustrating. I could not endure listening, so just quit halfway in.

Good book; read it in print.