Tuesday, January 8, 2013

A Review of Murder a Cappella: A Sweet Adelines Mystery by James R. Callan and Diane Bailey

What a hoot this novel was! I would love to see this made as a  movie with all the music provided by Sweet Adelines and Barber Shop Quartets. There are so many quotable lines, such as those in Princess Bride and UHF. (What? Mine are the only kids who memorized those movies?)
quote: Shutting down the speculation was about as likely as teaching armidillos not to become roadkill.
quote: Some of the habits I'd developed as a single working mother clung to me like staticky clothes from the dryer.
Delightful paragraph:  They say being famous is not as easy or glamorous as it looks. As the afternoon stretched on, I believed it. Dozens of women approached to compliment our performance. I accepted their congratulations with as much grace as I could muster, but after several hours my graciousness had leaked out. I squirmed in my seat, hot, and hungry for something better than another hotdog. . . . By the end of the day, the only things holding me together were bobby pins and the vice grip of my makeup.
     I love books that show me another world, another process, another way that I would never see on my own. I know I did not learn the whole of the world of the Sweet Adelines, but what I did see was fascinating. There was little blood to the murders, but there was lots of police investigation told from the viewpoint of a singer at a Sweet Adeline competition, held at the Alamo, who was also a policewoman.
I can recommend this book to anybody who doesn't need a lot of explosions in their literature to stay happy.

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