Review: Coffee to Die For, by Linda French

Coffee to Die For by Linda French:

Alongside Teddy, Sister Bede Kinney sat with hands clasped, the picture of perfect humility and call-to-service. In Bede's eyes danced the question: just how did Asian boys in ballgowns fit into the Lord's great Scheme of Things?

Synopsis: History professor Teddy Morelli has a complicated family, and while she's not quite investigating her brother-in-law's murder, she is trying to clear her sister of all charges. While not getting together with her ex-husband and trying to locate her mother in the Galapagos.

Teddy Morelli's sister Daisy is complicated: the ditzy vegan owner of a stuffed rabbit company, she's being cuckolded by her husband Leo, a botanist developing a $10mil strain of coffee. The humiliation ends when Leo is stabbed to death in his lab, but then the coffee plants go missing, and one of Daisy's sketchiest employees has embroiled everyone in a weed deal with Alaska. No, like three whole very large cities in Alaska. And then he takes off. Good times.

Here's the thing: French only wrote three Teddy Morelli mysteries, and I've read all three. For me, they're the complete package: technically flawless writing, fascinating characters (not all likeable), interesting plot and setting setting setting. The stories roam all over Washington State and rope in a number of the strange small people who live in the cracks in the world.

This installment of the series is possibly the least believable in terms of plot denouement, but I found I was having too good of a time to care much.

Also? Bonus points for safe sex talk. It was not just well-integrated and welcome, but hot and funny too.

Damn I wish there were more than three entries in the series. *sigh*

Review: Talking Rain, and Steeped in Murder, by Linda French

Talking Rain by Linda French:

Next noon, under the campus bus shelter, a tiny flutist played a melancholy phrase. She was having trouble with the grace notes and couldn't master their time. Teddy turned up the collar of her brown velvet trenchcoat and stared at the sumptuous purple lining of the flute case. She thought about grace notes, and rainy November days.

Synopsis: A college professor, a knee surgeon, a professional wrestler and a madwoman walk into a bar...

The first of a pair of genuinely intriguing mysteries: first-person POV done well, lots of lovely Seattle-environs placeporn, and scuba diving. If you like mysteries, this does not suck. It's a well-written and enjoyable, very much above-par entrant into the field, of a college professor and her tangled love and family life. Very nice. I think I read it in an hour and a half. Good scuba decription, though.

Steeped in Murder by Linda French:

Teddy glanced up at the sun-kissed Californian. Herb Patchett had the most amazing head of hair for a middle-aged man she had ever seen. Still blond as a beach boy's, the hair was wavy and gorgeous, gleaming with champagne highlights in the sunset. Herb had important hair, executive hair.

Synopsis: Academic politics are lame.

Same series as above, only much less successful. The worries of the lady academic trying to make tenure, when someone offs the chair. Oof, if I had a nickel for every time I found myself in that situation...

Although to be fair, I did not see the murderer's identity coming at all. I'd definitely read another in the series, but I can't say either of these would be a reread.