The Body in the Gravel

A Jazzi Zanders Mystery, Book Three

By: Judi Lynn

Narrated by: Devon Sorvari

Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Even in a lovely town like River Bluffs, Indiana, flipping houses can be a challenge. Especially when there’s the proverbial skeleton in the closet - and a literal corpse in the driveway....

House-flipper Jazzi Zanders has her work cut out for her. Her latest flip, which she co-purchased with her fiancée Ansel and cousin Jerod, is a three-story fixer-upper that’s more of a droopy-downer. One corner of the house is sinking and needs to be jacked up with a new cement foundation. That costs money. And causes headaches. And creates a work environment that’s not only hostile, it’s downright deadly....

Jazzi knows it’s a tough job. Which is why she hired Darby to lay the cement. But when Darby gets into a fiery argument with the furnace man - and then never shows up to lay gravel for the driveway - Jazzi starts to wonder if the rumors about Darby are true. Did he kill his wife and son and bury them in the yard like some folks claim? When Darby’s dead body comes pouring out of a gravel truck, murder upstages the real estate market as her biggest concern....

©2019 Judi Lynn (P)2019 Vibrance Press

The victim was nasty!

family-dynamics, friendship, Indiana, murder-investigation, small-business, small-town, law-enforcement*****

I found that I had skipped this one, so I went back to get this one as an audio because I had really liked the ones I had read! Each of the books does well as a stand alone, however. Ansel and Jazzi are house flippers who work with her cousin to get the job done but need specialized contractors for some things. Like driveways. The company they chose to deliver the underlayment of gravel is someone they've used before despite his nasty demeanor because the jobs were done right at the best price. When he doesn't show up as promised, they call for someone else in the company to deliver but then the body of the owner falls out with the gravel. Enter their friend the Homicide detective who usually asks Jazzi to come along as a buffer when questioning witnesses outside of the station. Good sleuthing!
Devon Sorvari is the narrator and really adds to the personalities of the many characters.

Keeps you guessing

Second one I've listen to really enjoy how keeps you guessing and listen to jazzy life and family

My first read of this author

Loved the story. Excellent writing. Good story line not a predictable plot. Kept you interested. good characters. Great narrator.

Loved it

I love this series. The story is well written and I love that Jazzy is thriving in an untraditional job for women. When ever I listen to a book in this series, I think about making a few house repairs. Then I remind myself that Jazzy and her crew are not going to magically appear to help me. (sigh)

A little too fiction for comfort

I’ve been trying to stick with this series to see if perhaps it gets either a bit more realistic, a bit less overly dramatic, or at the least, grows on me a bit more. The major ideas are fun (solving mysteries, a really smart and talented house flipper, close family, etc), but it’s surrounded by too many *very unrealistic concepts, and a lot of unnecessary drama. The fact that a detective keeps asking this random girl to help him on cases (which gets to an annoying point- he legit cannot interview a single person without her help, and he seemingly runs out of questions that she then asks- which are incredibly obvious questions) is more than annoying. If she added something really intellectual or intuitive to the situation, it’d probably work. But she doesn’t. And it seems the only reason she gets invited is to make the person be interrogated “comfortable.” No detective cares for the suspect to be comfortable… Additionally, the main character’s fiancé/husband’s (Ansel) family wanting to come to a wedding and then just being absolutely disrespectful, horrible, and almost always about to fight is just so unrealistic. We get that the family has issues and don’t like each other. Not to mention how many *times guys “stared at Jazzy” and made a move on her, but yet she finds herself not that attractive despite being hit on my every character? The writing just *really exaggerates to such an unrealistic point that it gets aggravating.

The author is great at creating mysteries, and putting fun clues around, and the storyline of the *mystery is great- it’s the extra stuff that just gets so left field and takes me entirely out of the story. The amount of rumblings of “this is *so unrealistic,” “we get it, Jazzy is hot…” “what family does this?!” has gotten to a point that I cant keep giving my money to this series.

I really wanted to like this series, but sadly this series is a no for me. Like so many other reviews, def gonna check out the author’s other books cause l do think there is a talent in the writing, it’s just the storytelling that is killing me.

Last note- this is one of my favorite narrators!