Blue Blood by Susan MacBride

AMAZON BOOK BLURB
Mixing a dash of Dallas society, a pinch of Janet Evanovich, and murder in the land of big hair, Blue Blood is the first installment in award-winning author Susan McBride's sassy Debutante Dropout mystery series.

To the dismay of her high society mother, Cissy, Dallas heiress Andy Kendricks wants no part of the Junior League life—opting instead for a job as a website designer and a passel of unpedigreed pals. Now her good friend Molly O'Brien is in bad trouble, accused of killing her boss at the local restaurant Jugs.

Though no proper deb would ever set foot in such a sleazy dive, Andy's soon slipping into skintight hot pants and a stuffed triple D bra to gain employment there and somehow help clear Molly's name.

But Andy's undercover lark soon brings her into too-close contact with all manner of dangerous adversaries—including a shady TV preacher, a fanatical Mothers Against Porn activist … and a killer who is none too keen on meddling rich girls.

_____________________________________________________________
REVIEW
Molly O’Brien had a tough life after she chose to drop her fashion design classes at the Columbia College in Chicago where she shared a room with her best friend Andy Kendricks from Texas. They met at school when foster child Molly was admitted to a prestigious school for wealthy kids through a scholarship. An illustrious affair with a Hemmingway wanne-be convinced Molly that love could conquer all. She followed him to Paris, fell pregnant, got dropped and had to move back to Texas, where she found a job at the hot-spot restaurant "Jugs".

She is accused of murdering the owner, Bud Hartman, and desperate for help, contacts Andy, whom she hasn't seen for ten years.

Rebellious Andy immediately steps in to help the only real friend she ever had. The friendship was not exactly what Andy's mother, Cissy, a Texan high-society dame, had in mind for her heiress daughter. Molly was from the wrong side of the tracks. But Andy made it her mission to buck the system her whole life, like refusing to be a debutante on her 18th birthday, and studying graphic design and computers when she, as a trust fund baby, never had to work.

With her unending love for Nancy Drew and the television series Law & Order, Andy gets to work on solving the murder mystery. Any bra size is possible with the right shoulder pads strategically positioned. Combined with serious hot pants, she did not have much trouble in getting a job at "Jugs" as a waitress to try and find the real killers of the dangerous owner.

"Jugs" is more than just eye candy for men, thorns in the eyes of the Mother of Porn - ladies, the Women’s Wellness Clinic, and points of interested to Reverend Jim Bob.`

There is a lot of appetites to be satisfied in the ensuing drama, adventure, and mystery. As Dolly Parton can attest to: Jugs can be a lot more than weapons of mass distraction and feisty Andy knows how to achieve just that!

My comments: It's a chic-lit book for young women, containing all the elements to demarcate the target audience perfectly. All the young women who ever played a role as a PI, especially a contemporary element of Nancy Drew, are included. The background includes a touch of a Paris Hilton, the reality tv-series The Reals Housewives of Texas, and a similarity with the restaurant-chain Shooters. It is a delightful, enchanting and fun read. There's lots of love lost, but for various reasons other than romance!

Oh, I identified the murderer right from the start. It felt good for a change!

Star rating:
Plot 1; drama 1; character building 1; satire 1; social comment 1. Five stars in this genre.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much, it was presented in such good taste, I would love to read more in this Debutante Dropout Series of 5 books: Blue Blood (#1); The Good Girl's Guide To Murder (#2); The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (#3); Night of the Living Deb (#4); Too Pretty to Die (#5).

Yes, imagine me enjoying this genre! Unthinkable, but very true in this case!

ARC received from edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com

_____________________________________________________________

Genres: 2013-releases, 2014-releases, action, adventure, crime-novel, detective-story, drama, family, fiction, murder, mystery, relationships, reviewed, romance, satire 

Original title: Blue Blood (Debutante Dropout Mystery, #1)

Number of pages: Mass Market Paperback: 333 pages 

Formats: Kindle, Paperback, Nook, Kobo

Publication date: January 2014

Publishers:  Avon / Ebook, Witness Impulse (HarperCollins)

ISBN: 0060563893

ISBN13: 9780060563899)

Edition language: English

Series: Debutante Dropout Mystery #1

Literary awards:  Anthony Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original (2005), Lefty Award (2005)

Purchase links: Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Indiebooks, Kobobooks
_____________________________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan McBride is the author of Very Bad Things, a young adult thriller due out in hardcover October 14, 2014, from Delacorte Press. She also writes mainstream fiction. The Truth About Love & Lightning (02/13) was selected by Target stores for their Emerging Authors program and dubbed "a poignant page-turner" by Publishers Weekly.  Little Black Dress spent five weeks on the St. Louis bestsellers list and was a Target Recommended Read, and The Cougar Club was selected by Target Stores as a Bookmarked Breakout Title and named a Midwest Connections Pick by the Midwest Booksellers Association. Foreign editions of Susan’s books have been published in France, Turkey, Croatia, and Bulgaria.

Susan has penned a short memoir, In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After 40, which tells her tale of becoming an "accidental Cougar" and marrying a younger man, her cancer diagnosis at age 42, and finding herself pregnant at 47.

Susan wrote the award-winning Debutante Dropout Mysteries (HarperCollins/Avon), including Blue Blood, The Good Girl's Guide To Murder, The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club, Night Of The Living Deb, and Too Pretty To Die. She has authored several YA series books for Random House about debutantes in Houston: The Debs (2008) and Love, Lies, And Texas Dips (2009). Gloves Off, the third book, has not been released.

In January of 2012, Susan was named one of St. Louis's "Most Dynamic People of the Year" by the Ladue News. In April of 2012, she was given the "Survivor of the Year" Award by the St. Louis affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As Susan likes to say, "Life is never boring."

More information on the author can be found on her WEBSITE

_____________________________________________________________
Books in the Debutante Dropout Mystery Series

MY REVIEWS FOR THE SERIES

#1 Blue Blood
#2 The Good Girl's Guide to Murder
#3 The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club
#4 Night of the Living Deb

#5 Too Pretty to Die

The Kabbalist by Yoram Katz

Genres: Historical fiction, Murder, Mystery
Kindle File Size: 2639 KB
Print Length: 339 pages
Printed formats: Kindle, Paperback
ISBN-10: 1484946448
ASIN: B00FI92AP6
Published date: September 24th 2013
Publishers: Yoram Katz; 1 edition (September 27, 2013), CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Edition Language: English
Purchase link: Amazon Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.;  Barnes & Noble

---

AMAZON BOOK BLURB: 
An old letter, discovered in Normandy, sends Jean de Charney, a young Frenchwoman, to present-day Israel, in pursuit of a 200 year old family secret. She teams up with local private-eye Yossi Luria and the two quickly realize that the old mystery is lethal and still claiming victims. Their quest takes them back into the Holy Land's history, through the Napoleonic era and the Crusades, right into the origins of Christianity and of Kabbalah – the Jewish mystical tradition. What is this old secret that people in the 21st century are ready to kill for? It turns out to be startlingly more profound than a family mystery, with direct impact on Jean and Yossi’s personal lives. 

---

REVIEW: 

Murder embedded in a historical mystery...surprising, thought-provoking, thrilling, controversial 


Isreal. Safed, Jerusalem.

A murder mystery turns into a journey through history, starting at Shimon – Galilee, 149 AD, passing through the ages to March 6th, 2010, spanning the life of Yeshua Ben Yossef aka Jesus, The Roman Empire, the wars in Europe, including the Napoleonic wars, WWII, the Israeli wars.

The death of a monk, on January 16th, 2006 quietly phased out as a burglary gone wrong. However, behind the scenes, another story is enfolding when a private investigator,(an ex-cop) Yossi Luria, gets involved in a case to solve a mystery for Jeanne de Charney, a masters degree student of France who is looking for information on her family.

His investigation opens up a hornets nest around secret documents which are claimed by both Christian (possibly also known as 'The Holy Grail') and Jewish religious groups. The origin of the "Kabbalah" becomes the center of all events, including the murders. For some keepers of the secret, the secret scrolls are an essential negotiating tool, for others it is proof that Jesus was not a Christian at all...

Who was Jesus really? History has taught us to always consider who the recorders of history are.Each conqueror claims a different version. This story proves it.

Through these wars and deadening battles, these documents would be handed over from generation to generation for safekeeping and to protect the status quo. But there were different groups demanding possession and ownership and people would die in the process...

This book is a riveting, cannot-put-it-down, detective tale, embedded in a historical mystery that keeps the reader mesmerized while feeding astonishing information through the narrative. A brilliant book in which Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" is contradicted with an equally profound hypothesis.

The author says: "One thing I learned in the process of writing this book is that it is not too difficult to come up with a conspiracy theory and substantiate it. It is probably as easy as defending an old and improbable established myth. The lesson I take from this, and which I hope to share with you, dear reader, is that we should always use common sense and good judgment when
examining a new and thrilling conspiracy theory, as well as when examining an old and established dogma. Both can be incredibly enlightening, terribly misleading or even both simultaneously– it is up to us always to keep an open, inquisitive and critical mind." - Yoram Katz.

I do not believe in fate, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it was fate having me read three books in succession about the French Revolution, the world wars and the clashes of Religious dogmas through the ages, by totally different authors from different nations.

The more astounded I became, reading this book, the more I remembered the quote(anonymous): "Different people build different bridges to God, but instead of worshiping God they worship the bridges instead."

I did not like Dan Brown's commercially-driven books at all, mainly due to the hype that was built around it to sell it, and partly because it aimed to shock. I was disgusted when it ended. I gave all his books away, just wanted to get rid of it.

The Kabbalist, on the other hand, inspires the reader to rather think, to measure, to debate, with no shock-value intended at all, although the story is spellbinding. This book kept me reading and reading with the intention to read it again and digest more of the ideas and theories expressed in it. Although it is also partly historically correct, and partly an imaginary 'what if' - exercise, I can somehow relate more to it.

The different viewpoints from the different religious denominations were presented objectively and I am sure many readers would love to debate these issues, since so many hypotheses were offered.

I recommend this book to historical fiction enthusiasts who also enjoy a mystery that covers hundred of years and end up as the background to a fascinating murder. However, it is essential to approached this book with an open mind.

The characters were exciting, the clues well-hidden. The story fast-moving. The information staggering. Love plays a role - an endearing one. The combination of these elements worked perfectly. An excellent experience.

This book needs a big audience.

Five stars.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Yoram was born in Haifa, Israel.
After serving his mandatory three years in the IDF (as most Israelis do), Yoram studied and completed his B.A. in psychology and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Having spent two years in Europe and Africa, Yoram returned to Haifa for his B.Sc. in Computer Engineering, and has spent most of his career since in the hi-tech industry, half of it in senior managerial positions.

In one of his roles, Yoram relocated with his family to Singapore for three years - a cultural shock and an experience that will be probably reflected in a future novel.

Reading has always been an obsession. Fiction, history, science, nonsense and virtually everything is routinely devoured by Yoram in large doses.

At some point, while spending a lot of time in business trips, Yoram started using the long flights and time between meetings, realizing that his life experience, as well as living in a county which is steeped in history and adventure, serve as great catalysts for writing.

"The Kabbalist” is Yoram's first published novel.

Yoram is happily married with 3 grown-up children and looks forward to becoming a grandfather next year.

(Information source: Yoram Katz)