Book Spotlight | November 2024
We are back to murder/mystery for this month’s book spotlight. This is the first in the Jazz Ramsey Mysteries series.
Summary: The way Jazz Ramsey figures it, life is pretty good. She owns her own home in one of Cleveland’s most diverse, artsy, and interesting neighborhoods. She has a job she likes as an administrative assistant at an all-girls school, and a volunteer interest she’s passionate about—Jazz is a cadaver dog handler.
Jazz is working with Luther, a cadaver dog in training. Luther is still learning cadaver work, so Jazz is putting him through his paces at an abandoned building that will soon be turned into pricey condos. When Luther signals a find, Jazz is stunned to see the body of a young woman who is dressed in black and wearing the kind of make-up and jewelry Jazz used to see on the Goth kids back in high school.
She’s even more shocked when she realizes that beneath the tattoos and the piercings and all that pale make up is a familiar face.
The lead detective on the case is an old lover, and the murdered woman is a former student. Jazz finds herself sucked into the case, obsessed with learning the truth.
My Thoughts: I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book, but I hear the series gets better as it goes on, so I might continue it.
I really thought there would be more dog involved, and maybe that’s why I didn’t like it so much. After the initial find, Luther was almost an afterthought – just mentioned here and there. However, with the ending of this one; I have hopes that book two will have more dog involvement.
Jazz isn’t very likeable in this. I actually found her kind of annoying. Maybe she will have better character development in the following books. I did like Nick, though. I would like to see if anything re-develops between Jazz and Nick.
Overall, the mystery was interesting and fun to read. I did figure out the killer before it was revealed, but I still found myself wanting to read more.
