Just Follow the Money

By: Jinx Schwartz

Narrated by: April Doty

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's Summary

Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht, and she’s not afraid to use it! She’s been visiting France for a couple of months, barging on the Canal du Midi with her boyfriend Jenks Jenkins. She hit the hot spots in the south of France, eating great food, drinking fine wine, and foiling a terrorist plot: all the usual stuff.

Now, she’s ready to leave for Mexico and back to her yacht in the Sea of Cortez, but not so fast! At the last minute, she’s offered a mysterious and lucrative assignment by persons unknown and jumps at it. After all, Jenks is back at work in Dubai, so why not stay in France a little longer and make some bucks to boot? Never mind that she doesn’t know where she’ll be working, or for whom.

However, ending up on a mega-yacht in the Med can't be all bad, right? And with a surprising crew of old friends. But there's still the big question: Why are they all there? It, soon, becomes obvious this is no pleasure cruise, but she's told to mind her own business and just enjoy the ride. 

Are they kidding? This is Hetta Coffey they're talking to.

©2017 Jinx Schwartz (P)2019 Jinx Schwartz

Not fat, just fluffy.

Where to start?
Hetta Coffey and friends, Jan and Rhoda, plus dog Pothang, are enjoying the luxurious Parisian hotel and shopping life before returning home when they are recruited, with large fee and expenses, to remain a few days longer, job itself unknown. Turns out, they are to act as a distraction whilst others look for a missing woman, but instead they do some sleuthing of their own.

Unlike the main character in this book, the story is very lightweight, meant to be an hilarious thriller romp. And quite possibly it would be so if read in print form, although the totally obnoxious and smug Hetta Coffey would be a difficult personality to like under any circumstances. Described by one of her friends as, "A juvenile delinquent on a joy ride," Hetta is self opinionated, rude, money, shopping, champagne and food obsessed, fat, nosey and horrible to friends and the rest of the world alike, and none too bright, she is far from the charming rogues of, for example, P..G. Woodhouse. Bad enough to picture her in one's own immagination. But combined with the vocal interpretation of a narrator, she becomes horrible.

Narration is by April Doty. Her interpretation of the character and her two friends, to be fair, is quite good, if somewhat slow (reasonably resolved by increasing playback speed to 1.25). Her exaggerated Texan Southern accent is a hard one to hear but it is the appalling French accent she rolls out at every opportunity in the early part of the book which makes listening quite excruciating: whether this is part of the comedy angle in the writing or Ms.Doty's own invention is not known. Suffice to say, it was so unbearable that this reader nearly abandoned the book at this point, something most unusual. But it did improve, the snippets of French stopped and, though it took several attempts, the story finished.

My thanks to the rights holder of Just Follow the Money, who, at my request, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy via Audiobook Boom. As is probably obvious, the book was not for me although I am sure that it would be enjoyed by many. Hard to listen to the reading, horrible, silly characters in a farce not a mystery, which itself was all too easy to solve, I could not recommend this to anyone other than, perhaps, a giggly adolescent. And then I would suggest reading the print version.