2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Review: Poison Pen

Happy Book Review Tuesday – today we’re embarking on a mystery…

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you upfront that I’ve become email-friends with the author, Sheila Lowe – she has guest posted on here twice (here and here) and sent a guest poster to me who has also posted twice (here and here). She has shared professional and personal stories and wisdom, and she has not held it against me that I’m a lawyer even though in her day-job line of work (forensic handwriting analyst, how cool and unusual is that?) my lawyer people make her life more than a teensy bit difficult. So yes, I have a bit of a girl-crush.

But still, you should know that I wouldn’t review the book at all if I couldn’t say anything nice (I was not raised by wolves, after all), and I would never give a fake blow-sunshine-places-it-doesn’t-belong review if I didn’t stand behind the book. I also bought my e-copy of the book, (I will always let you know if I didn’t, even though it doesn’t affect my review one way or another), thank you very much.

So with all that legal-ish disclosure crap out of the way, here we go.

Poison Pen is a genuinely fun mystery with a great, strong-willed and opinionated protagonist, Claudia Rose, who is – like the book’s author – a forensic handwriting analyst working in Los Angeles. Well, genuinely fun to me. Then again, I can call a book that opens with a suspicious suicide “fun” – I don’t want to make assumptions about your ability to do so though. You know what they say about people who assume…

Anyway, the story opens at a funeral and proceeds through a series of plot points that wind around like the California Canyon roads Claudia repeatedly finds herself driving as she gets pulled deeper and deeper into the bizarre world of Lindsey Alexander, suicide victim, publicist, and It Girl. There are some decidedly dark elements to the story – child exploitation, violence, blackmail – and a few red herrings thrown in for good measure. The story moves at a brisk pace that keeps you thoroughly engaged in Claudia’s world and curious where she will find herself next throughout the duration of her hunt for the truth about what really happened to her one-time frenemy.

Poison Pen is the first of the Claudia Rose mysteries. I’ve already moved on to number two (Written In Blood) and am pleased as punch to report that two more await me after that… Check the series out. It is factually very informative (come on, how many of us know anything at all about the meaning of our handwriting? I guarantee you will end up analyzing your own writing style after reading about Claudia’s take on the scribbles of everyone around her…) and fictionally very entertaining. What more can you ask for? 🙂

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