(The Appeal, #1) I enjoyed reading this mystery, where nothing is revealed until the end, unless you are smart enough to figure it out. Which I am not. A plan to raise funds to help a child with cancer, some nurses who return from Africa, a doctor from Africa, and others, figure in this tale.
A drug-addled former child star signs to do a porn film, not quite realizing what she is doing. Junior Bender is hired to find out who is sabotaging the film. Things get complicated.
Well, Junior needs to track down who is offing the members of a "chain". Some more nifty characters are met, relationships strengthened, and some touching philosophy expounded. I hope that's a real word.
Junior Bender finds out why the 1960s rock'n'roll scene in Philadelphia is getting people killed in 2012ish L.A., among other things. I really enjoyed this book. The characters are great, the plot is good enough to confuse me, and there is some witty dialogue.
Quote:
"Biggest day of the year for Ed was December 26. All the Christmas stuff went to half off, and he shopped all day long."... "If I got rid of it all now, it'd be like crumpling up Ed's memory and tossing it away." (pg. 110) I wept a little at this.
Quote #2:
"Alice says, sure, two sets of rules. Men and women need different rules on account of how they're not anything alike, what with women being all admirable and so forth." (pg. 236)
Mother and kids travel from Texas to a miserable existence in California picking cotton during the Dust Bowl era. Not bad, but no Steinbeck, as someone said to me.