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A Mystery
by Minerva Koenig
Book Reviewed by:Nine Days, Koenig's debut, is atmospheric, gutsy and fun, and Julia Kalas is an intriguing new heroine in crime fiction.
She's short, round, and pushing forty, but Julia Kalas is a damned good criminal. For 17 years she renovated historic California buildings as a laundry front for her husband's illegal arms business. Then the Aryan Brotherhood made her a widow, and witness protection shipped her off to the tiny town of Azula, Texas. Also known as the Middle of Nowhere.
The Lone Star sticks are lousy with vintage architecture begging to be rehabbed. Julia figures she'll pick up where she left off, but she's got a federal watchdog now: police chief Teresa Hallstedt, who is none too happy to have another felon in her jurisdiction. Teresa wants Julia where she can keep an eye on her, which turns out to be behind the bar at the local watering hole. The bar's owner, Hector Guerra, catches Julia's eye, so she takes the job. But before she can get to know him as well as she'd like, they find a dead body on the bar's roof.
The county sheriff begins trying to pin the murder on Hector for reasons that Julia discovers are both personal and nefarious. Unfortunately, the evidence cooperates, but Julia's finely-honed personal radar tells her Hector isn't a killer. She risks reconnecting with the outlaw underground to prove it and learns the hard way that she's not nearly as tough - or as right - as she thinks she is.
Nine Days, Koenig's debut, is atmospheric, gutsy and fun, and Julia Kalas is an intriguing new heroine in crime fiction.
Wow. That's what I thought as I finished the last page of Ms Koenig's terrific mystery, Nine Days. My next thought: How the heck did I get here? Not because it's an implausible ending. No, sirree. Not only is it a very plausible ending to a delightfully twisty, turny, blind-alley-filled story, but it hints at the beginning of a beautiful friendship between an unlikely but literarily scintillating duo...continued
Full Review
(713 words)
(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
It is estimated that two-thirds of the population of both the United and Great Britain are either overweight or obese. Statistics that show the average American female has size 14 measurements. In Britain, the average woman has a size 16 body (which is equivalent to a US size 14.) The waist measurement of the average American and British man is 39" and 38" respectively. It would appear that slender people are being crowded out, except on the pages of fashion magazines. But what about inside the pages of popular fiction?
At one time, chubby characters - when they were represented at all - were characterized as some combination of (pick one or all) gluttonous, lazy, selfish, oafish, and/or stupid buffoons. Think Shakespeare's Sir John...
If you liked Nine Days, try these:
by Gwen Florio
Published 2021
In the first of a new mystery series, we meet Nora Best as she flees her old life, cheating husband and all, and takes to the road with an Airstream trailer.
by Joe R. Lansdale
Published 2016
Only Hap and Leonard would catch a cold case with hot cars, hot women, and ugly skinheads.
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I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now only that place where the books are ...
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Anne Frasier, USA Today bestselling author of Play Dead
A satisfyingly flawed female lead, a deep sense of place, and dead-on descriptions combine to create a Coen Brothers movie in print.
