Emilie Richards - Beware False Profits (2007)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
A delightful entry in a “cozy” genre that has lately seemed to run amok with preciousness and more recipes, “how-to-fix-it” advice and country folklore than you’d find on any food or home and garden channel. When I think murder I don’t generally think hobbies.
But maybe that’s just me. I like my mysteries free from an overdose of cuteness.
Not humor, though. Humor I like.
Luckily so does Emilie Richards. A novelist who’s written more than fifty books and is well known for her romance titles as much as her mysteries. Although I admit I’ve only come lately to this series featuring Aggie Sloan-Wilcox and her minister husband Ed, lately of Ohio.
Aggie has a habit, it seems, of discovering bodies and running interference with the local constabulary when there’s a murder to be solved or criminal to be apprehended. Far-fetched, you might say, well, yes, but a willing suspension of disbelief will get you over the rough spots.
From the opening sentence: “For a minister’s wife I spend too much time in bars…” you know you’re in for a fun ride as Aggie and Ed, on leave in NYC for a little rest and recreation are called upon to find the whereabouts of a parishioner. Joe Wagner, director of the local Helping Hands food bank, seems to have disappeared while on his monthly business trip to the Big Apple. His wife, Maura, would rather a low-key look-see by Aggie and Ed instead of a full-blown police investigation. At least for the time being.
It is the eve of Mayday! Festivities and Joe is bound to turn up at some point since he takes his yearly fortune-telling activities at the fete very seriously.
Back in NY, Aggie and Ed follow Joe’s trail to the portals of the Pussycat Club in Greenwich Village, home of various and sundry female impersonators and well, the rest you can imagine. Aggie and Ed are in for a few surprises.
Soon, back in Mineral Springs minus Joe who is still among the missing, Aggie and Ed and the rest of the town-folk are faced with murder when the mayor’s wife is bumped off in the midst of Mayday! celebrations. What one thing has to do with another is part of the mystery as financial shenanigans at Helping Hands are discovered and the mayor and the missing Joe jump to the head of the suspects list.
What I found most entertaining about all this is the back-and-forth among the people involved and the easy way that author Richards has with dialogue while schmoozing the various relationships so you actually want to hang around and see what happens next.
Ed Wilcox makes for a very down-to-earth minister who’s no fool and knows what a treasure he has in Aggie. Richards also has given Aggie a free-wheeling, free-thinking mother, kids who are not intrusive and actually add to the texture of the story, and a best friend named Lucy Jacobs who is believable in the role.
The relationship between the two women is well developed and minus the usual phony dialogue found in many of these sorts of books in which smart talk is the only reason to include a best friend character. I liked both these women a lot and believed that in spite of the happenings, they could and would be friends. It’s a good thing to have at the heart of a story. It gives the proceedings an undercurrent of sensibility.
Truth to tell, nothing that happens in this story really strains the brain cells too much, but Beware False Profits is still a treat to read because of the way that author Richards goes about delineating her various characters and their charming quirks or lack thereof. Mineral Springs is definitely a town I will want to revisit.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink
Comments
nice review!
great history!!
http://betterworldforus.wordpress.com
Posted by: betterworldforus | Apr 2, 2009 12:23:25 AM
how many pages????
Posted by: jk | May 13, 2009 10:41:36 PM
hi
Posted by: no thanks | Dec 2, 2011 10:19:06 AM
hiii
Posted by: no thanks | Dec 2, 2011 10:27:11 AM
