REVIEW: An Intimate Murder (+$50 Amazon Giftcard Giveaway!)

Title: An Intimate Murder

Author: Stacey Verdick Case

Series: Catherine O'Brien #3

Pages:  288

Date Published: October 7th, 2014

Publisher: Before the Falls Books

Format: eBook

Genre: Contemporary Mystery

Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours

Synopsis:

A Catherine O'Brien Mystery: When Jonathan and Susan Luther are murdered in their home, St. Paul homicide detective Catherine O'Brien and her partner Louise discover this isn't the first time the Luther family has been visited by tragedy. Is it a case of bad family luck or is there something more?

~My Thoughts~

An Intimate Murder is a contemporary mystery with romantic elements. Catherine O'Brien is a bad ass detective, working homicide, and she and her partner Louise break in the novel by being called to a murder scene. Catherine is not at all happy about this, as she was just about to re-consumate her marriage to her hubby...for the umteenth time ;) but was interrupted by this inconvenient murder.

I liked the snarky and somewhat sarcastic humor that Catherine had. Although at times she did come off as callous and whiny because of her snark...she still was a good character that I enjoyed spending time with.

While I liked the characters...the storyline and plot was a bit of a problem for me. There were some plot holes and inconsistencies with real life that kind of threw me for a loop. It was hard to get over certain things that were obviously not capable of happening or would not happen in our world today. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough. The mystery itself was pretty satisfying and I enjoyed how the threads of the story wrapped together in the end, but those first stumbling blocks make it hard for me to really get settled into the book.

Overall, I really enjoyed Stacy's writing style. It was fun and interesting and witty. There were a couple of items that could have used a little more thought and research, but overall this was a fun and entertaining read that let me really get into the story and enjoy the ride!

~Try an Excerpt!~

The world as a whole is a strange place, and the people who inhabit this world are even stranger. The Luther’s neighbors proved to be the strangest I’d encountered in ten years of law enforcement. Considering the whackos and ice-blooded murders I’d run into, these neighbors could be proud of their over achieving ways.

The street looked benign, an affluent tree lined parkway with a BMW or Mercedes in every other driveway. The neighbor across the street had a pickup truck in their drive, but it turned out to be the yard man’s, who happened to be cleaning up the left behinds from the oak and maple fall deposits. Pretty to look at until they rotted into brown slime piles on your grass.

We questioned every neighbor on the block but no one heard the gunshots. They lived behind triple pane glass where the temperature was never too hot or too cold. Only one had dared to steal a glance out their insulated glass when an older car, rusted in too many places and not carrying the pedigree of a classic automobile, sped down the street.

“I knew right away they were up to no good.” Bernice Leigh, who claimed a relation to Janet Leigh, rocked on the edge of her tufted, chintz ottoman.

“Well maybe not right away.” She rolled her hand dramatically in the air. “At first I thought the car could belong to one of the boy’s friends who visit the Luther’s from time to time.”

“Did you know the Luther’s very well?” Louise nibbled the edge of a Ginger Thin Mrs. Leigh had fanned out on a china plate, and placed on the coffee table in front of us

~Meet Stacey!~ 

Stacy Verdick Case was born in Willmar, Minnesota.  After a brief stint as a military brat, where she lived in Fort Sill Oklahoma and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, her family moved back to Minnesota.

Stacy has written all her life earning a High School Writer Award and a Daphne Du Mauier Award for excellence in Mainstream Mystery/Suspense.

Stacy currently lives in a suburb of St. Paul with her husband of twenty-years, her five-year-old daughter, and their two cats.

An Intimate Murder is the third book in the Catherine O’Brien series.

Visit Stacy on the web:

www.StacyVerdickCase.com

Stacy will award a $50 Barnes and Noble GC to one winner, and a signed ARC of An Intimate Murder (US only) to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during this tour and her standard tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway