Mixing With Murder

Mixing With Murder by Ann Granger.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing (October 3, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0755320417

 

 

By Beverley Strong

Semi amateur PI and sometime actor, Fran Varady, receives a summons from night club owner and heavy man, Mickey Allerton, who wishes her to locate one of his pole dancers, Lisa, who has walked off the job and vanished, leaving him strangely distraught. Fran reluctantly accepts the commission, only because Mickey is holding her dog as hostage until the job is done, and travels to Oxford, where it's thought that Lisa may be staying with her parents. Mickey has booked Fran into a B and B, owned by Beryl, one of his former employees, where she joins a curiously disparate group of residents which includes a Croatian woman who is working for Beryl as a chambermaid, in order to improve her English. Fran locates Lisa who agrees to meet her by the river, but as Fran waits for her arrival, the body of another Croatian, Ivo, the doorman at Mickeys' club, floats to the bank of the river. Understandably alarmed, Fran conceals her knowledge of his identity from the police, much to the alarm of her buddy, Ganesh, with whom she has kept in touch by means of his mobile phone which she has borrowed. As Frans' investigation progresses, Lisa proves to be very far from the innocent victim she has portayed herself to be to both her parents and to Mickey, and lots of action occurs before the satisfactory conclusion of Frans' case.

This is my second Ann Granger book "starring" Fran Varady.  She reminds me of ... well,  me.  If she didn't have bad luck she'd have no luck at all! lol

Actually, I do like her character, and I do like Ann Granger's writing.  It's basic.  It's simple.  And at the same time she can make you like her characters and story enough to keep reading.  You can't ask for much more!  I think there is one more Fran Varady used book at Amazon that I will send for eventually,because she makes you want to know more about her characters.

This book was right for me , right now.  Not too complicated and yet interesting enough to make me keep picking up the book.

There's not much I can say because the Amazon review pretty much says the whole story!

I do look forward to another of her books.