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Swamp Spook  By  cover art

Swamp Spook

By: Jana DeLeon
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
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Publisher's summary

When black cats roam, and spooks are seen, Come celebrate, it’s Halloween.

Sinful, Louisiana, really knows how to throw a party, and it goes all out for Halloween. The weeklong celebration kicks off with a maze of horror in the park built of hay bales. And Fortune has the perfect assignment - the executioner. Her scene comes complete with a head block, a hatchet, and a fake body with removable head. It’s the perfect setup...for a crime.

When Fortune returns from break and realizes the body in her scene is a real one and not the prop, she knows trouble is coming. Before she can shake a broomstick, Celia Arceneaux has raised the alarm and the state police show up to take over the investigation. With Carter on the sidelines and Fortune the prime suspect, Swamp Team 3 sets out to catch a real monster.

©2018 Jana DeLeon (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Swamp Spook

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Another huge Thank You...

...to Audible listener/reviewer Wayne (Matthews, NC). If it were not for him I would have never even looked at this series. I really enjoy Jana DeLeon's Shaye Archer but this series seemed off of my beaten path. Anyway, I've just finished the last book (so far ) in this light, fun, fast paced original series. Each book is an adventure. The four central characters are very well developed and very often humorous.
Cassandra Campbell narrates all of these books beautifully.
This series is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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48 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The fun and mystery continue!

SWAMP SPOOK is book 13 in the outstanding Miss Fortune series by Jana DeLeon. Audible classify it as a cozy mystery and I suppose it is, but it is more fun than most of that genre. Fortune Redding has now retired from the CIA and has her private investigator license. The geriatric ex-spy pair Ida Belle and Gertie are helping her. As always they manage to frustrate Fortune's boyfriend (and local sheriff's deputy) Carter LeBlanc by stepping all over his cases. I love this series! Cassandra Campbell narrates perfectly.

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

4 Stars for this spooky Halloween special

4 Stars! Swamp Spook is book 13 in A Miss Fortune Mystery series. The series is set in Sinful, Louisiana, USA and follows Fortune, who up until book 12 was a CIA assassin in hiding, and old ladies Gertie and Ida Belle, who are lifelong Sinful residents and ex-spy war veterans, as they help solve a string of various crimes and murders.

This series is the first series of Cozy Mystery books that I have read. Cozy Mystery is a new-to-me genre and I am hooked. Once I listened to the first Miss Fortune Mystery series book, I couldn't stop. So far, I have listened to all of the books back to back and I'm not going to stop until there aren't any more.

I recommend reading/listening to these books in order since each book builds upon the prior book's story and it makes it much more entertaining and enjoyable to go in order. I'm sure you could still enjoy these books as standalone but it won't be the same.

In Swamp Spook, Sinful is having their week-long Halloween celebrations and all of the townspeople help out where they can. Fortune plays a character in the scary maze and in her scene she beheads a (fake) person. During the 30 minute break, someone swaps the fake dead dude with a real one. Of course, Celia gets involved and it is makes for a hilarious scene of realizing the fake dead guy is a real one. I love to see horrible things happen back to her. Her character is a lesson in karma. I hope she really gets shut down once and for all in one of these books, although it would take away a lot of drama so I don't know... Anyway, this twist certainly looks bad for Fortune, especially since she let the town in on her true identity as a CIA agent in the last book and people think she might be dangerous. Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie jump right into investigation mode to try to solve the murder and a few other crimes along the way.

If you like books with a big dose of humor, this is the series for you. I have found myself laughing out loud too many times to count.

The same narrator reads for the whole series. She did great for the first 11 books, but the past two have seemed sloppy, almost like she is just rushing through. She is making errors such as incorrect words read and using the wrong character name. That was disappointing. I do like that her voices are consistent from book to book.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Halloween comes to Sinful!

Former CIA assassin Fortune Redding returns to entertain and excite listeners in Swamp Spook by Jana Deleon. Halloween has come to Sinful, Louisiana, and Fortune finds herself recruited to play the executioner at the haunted maze, a role particularly suited to her. In it, she brandishes an axe and pretends to chop off the head of a person in the form of a dummy. But after the break in the middle of the maze event, Fortune returns to her position to find the body of a real man with his head cut off.

Things in the case get stranger and stranger, and Fortune’s arch enemy, Celia Arceneaux, brings in the state police, with accusations against Fortune as the murderer and Deputy Carter Leblanc as unable to handle the case because he is dating the chief suspect. Since Carter finds himself sidelined completely, even after Fortune is vindicated, he takes a move he never dreamed he’d ever make: He hires Fortune, with Ida Bell and Gertie, to use their detection agency to get to the bottom of the case.

Swamp Spook is a delightful addition to the Miss Fortune mystery series. With characteristic humor, Deleon gives us a further view of Sinful and its quirky residents. I enjoyed the creative plot and its great twists and turns, with some significant surprises for us readers. The Swamp Team 3 trio of Fortune, Ida Bell, and Gertie find new creative ways of detecting and getting themselves into and sneakily out of trouble.

Cassandra Campbell returns to perform the audio edition of this book. As with all the books in this series, Campbell does an excellent job of making this book delightful to listen to. She makes Fortune seem a very real person, a woman we would love to meet face to face and not just in the book. With excellent voices for each of the characters, Campbell makes Sinful come alive. I have read some of the books in this series visually when I didn’t want to wait for the audiobook to be released, and the audio versions have proven to be much more delightful than the print versions.

I truly enjoyed listening to Swamp Spook and give it five stars!

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4 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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SAID

I’m only in the first chapter
I lost count on how many times this author said, SAID

I said
Gurty said
Adibelle said

Talk about annoying.

So incredibly bad

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Best story yet

I really liked this story. Less cooky than previous books. This one had more of a story plot instead of 1/3 of the book about food. A few things bothered me though.... Fortune couldn’t see under water because the murky water affected her “retinas”??? Since the retina is on the back surface of the interior eye, I’m finding that hard to understand. And I wish SO VERY MUCH that Gerties last name is pronounced correctly: “A-Bear” NOT “He-Bert”

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Ok overall

It wasn’t a bad story, but certain aspects of the ending were figured out very early in the story. Partially figured out who was involved and definitely the “how”.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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This series is over rated...

I get why alot of people like these books but ill never understand why people LOVE them enough to give them 5 stars. The characters are stagnant, theres no progression whatsoever, the basic outline is the same exact thing in every book. Murder happens, they pledge not to get involved. THEN someone close to Fortune is somehow being blamed for or is involved in the goings on thus necessitating her ida bell and gerty to get involved. Once they do they list suspects go on a couple side quests in which gerty will inevitably do something inept, clumsy or just plain stupid (9 times out of 10 it could be avoided if gerty got glasses). Then nobody makes a big deal out of gerty almost killing them again🙄 then they get questioned by *insert authority figure here* and they come up with some elaborate lie. Nearing the end we inevitably come to ' the reveal ' where fortune makes several leaps in logic because of some meaningless item or phrase and "SOMEONES GUNA DIE IF WE DONT HURRY I CANT EXPLAIN EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE TO TAKE A CAR RIDE TO WHERE EVER WE'RE HURRYING TOO!" then Fourtune comes out with every single minute piece of what happened like shes known all along and has been playing dumb the entire book ( all because she saw a tic tak this time)🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Thats the other thing, the most OBVIOUS explanation was right there in front of everyone's face the whole time but no one even brought it up as a possibility? Im honestly done with these books....

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A perfect series.

Jana DeLeon is a master wordsmith. She can take the mundane and create hilarity.
Fortune and the gang are facing Halloween with the dead nipping at their heels.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

5* Cozy Mystery - light, fun, and makes me laugh

This is an excellent cozy mystery, so I give it 5 stars for what it is. This is not deep and meaningful writing, there's no exceptional turn of a phrase, or descriptions or ideas to ponder. It's a perfect way to spend being distracted from stress or life's problems. The mysteries are good, the plots are twisty, the characters are well-defined, and the comedy is well-written.

The narration is good.

Earlier books in the series had some obvious flaws - the author would forget details and change things and sometimes even go back to the first version. The narrator would sometimes use the wrong character's voice. These were things that a producer or editor should have caught. The later books in the series seem to be more fine-tuned.

If you are looking for distraction and something light, this series is very good.

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