The Sound of Murder (book review)

Ivy Meadows (nee Olive Ziegwart) is an actress by night and a P.I. in training by day. Her current evening gig is The Sound of Murder, a Cabaret-Sound of Music mashup that I'd definitely go to see. In Ivy's day job, her Uncle Bob, who is also her boss, has her filing old paperwork while he does the actual detecting. But then recent widower Charlie Small commits suicide, and Ivy becomes convinced he was murdered. She decides to do some detecting of her own. Let's just say it goes less than smoothly.

Ivy Meadows is a likable, funny, hapless narrator. She goes too far, says too much, sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong, suffers from camel toe in her costumes, and kinda burns down her house. And, like any good narrator in a mystery series, she knows a lot of people who get murdered. But the mysteries are only part of the fun in Cindy Brown's Ivy Meadows Mystery series. (The first book in the series is Macdeath.)

Brown worked in theatre for years, and she gets the charm, craziness, ego, fear, silliness, and bravery of the people who make shows happen. She gives us the has-been star, the sometime porn actress, the diva with memory problems, the creepy womanizer, 60-year-old cheerleaders, and people who just can't help saying "Macbeth" out loud in a theatre. They're entertaining company.

Brown's books are well-designed cotton candy, page turners sprinkled with genuine character-based humor and delightfully bad jokes. I greatly enjoyed both Macdeath and The Sound of Murder, and I look forward to the next one.

(By the way, the Kindle pre-order price for The Sound of Murder is only $2.99. It's also available in paperback for $15.95.)

(reviewer copies)