Review: Mama Solves a Murder

Mama Solves a Murder by Nora DeLoach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

  This book took a while for me to into.  It has a slow some what choppy build up to the plot, so I was tempted to put it down at first.  But once they started really detecting I was into it.  And the stakes elevated nicely as the clues were collected and put together.  

    The main character Simone puts herself as the "Watson" to her mother's "Sherlock".  She calls herself the "Della Street" to her mother's "Perry Maison".  As a writer, I understand this method for writing a mystery.  You want your genius detective to be able have cloak and dagger element.  You want to hide the "ah-ha!" clue from the audience until the big reveal.  The best way to do that is to have the reader follow an assistant that isn't quite as quick as the detective.  To be honest that is exactly what I find frustrating about Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  

What I Liked:

Simone is a paralegal.  She has a job that requires her to follow the book when it comes to collecting evidence.  That ads a bit of tension to Mama's intuition and instincts method which I found enjoyable. 

I currently live in Atlanta.  The atmosphere was pretty accurate, though not a time was spent on building the setting.  The foods were accurate.  The character of Mama was very familiar.  In fact a lot of time spent on character building which I did appreciate.  

What I Loved:

Both mysteries were very intriguing.  Mama is busy studying a series of arsons that killed her cousin, and niece.  Both women had reason to suspect that the elder cousin's neighbor was molesting his daughter.  The elder cousin told her daughter just before her house was burned to the ground.  Later, after telling Mama, aka Candy, about it the daughter is also a victim of arson.  Mama suspects the neighbor but she has to prove it.  

Simone, meanwhile, finds herself trying to help an old college roommate whom she hasn't spoken to in ages.  The classmate admits to having shot and killed a man in cold blood.  All the evidence points to her having being a cold blooded stalker and murderer.  

Simone, feeling under qualified  to pull the information she needs out of witnesses, inlists her mother's help as Mama has maxed out her speechcraft tree.  Through these interviews Mama starts to believe that maybe Cheryl wasn't the killer after all.  

What I Didn't Like:

    The first two acts of the story as a big rushed.  The result is a lot of telling, and not a lot of showing.  We are told over and over at the beginning that Mama is a genius, and a charmer, and that she can talk anyone into teller her their secrets - but we don't see her do it.  Simone just summerizes things Mama has done in the past.  We are told that Simon's boss is a legal eagle obsessed with finding the truth of things, but we aren't really shown it by his actions.  We are told that Simone is just as smart and quick witted as her mother.  But when she bows out of most testy situations to let her mom handle them, even when it's her job, we don't see it.  

  

In fact it isn't until after the above mentioned build up, that the story actually starts to really get interesting.  It feels as though the author, Nora, just wanted to hurry up and get to the mystery.  But as a result it takes half the book to get interesting.  That being said, once it starts to build up, it really builds up. Once Mama is on the case, interviewing very willing witnesses and asking the questions few other people have time for, the story does start to pull you along.   

The editors did this book no favors.  It feels as though a lot of good stuff was cut out, and lot of bad stuff was left in.  There are typos, and small plot holes.  There are places you can tell were shortened for word count but left unanswered questions.   There was a plot point or two that could have been omitted, and character building for characters we didn't really care about.  For example, the point  of Simone's friend Donna insisting on taking her on a double, half-blind- date knowing that Simone has a boyfriend.  It was a big deal, worth a chapter of dialogue that Simone didn't want to go.  But does when her boyfriend Cliff says he is ok with it.  But the story does not follow the date.  In fact no part of that situation leads to a clue, or follows the mystery at all.   The only possible reason for it was to show that  Simone's boyfriend Cliff was willing to trust her because he's also a lawyer and working on a nasty divorce case. Or to show that Donna didn't care about her bff's relationships?  Idk.

***SPOILERS!***

   

         I also didn't care much for the endings. At first I thought both mysteries were a bit heavy handed with the dramatic bad guys.    But after learning that Norma DeLoach worked as a social worker in Hampton South Carolina the horror of these cozy mysteries makes more since.  

     

            Turns out that in the arson case, the neighbor to the elder cousin, wasn't just molesting his daughter, and beating his wife.  He was also molesting his son... a sixteen year old is now, because his house burned down, murder cats and starting fires in his new foster home.  Mama concludes that since he's murder cats, and starting fires, he's likely the one who strangled his little sister and left our body to bloat in a stream for three days near where he camped in the woods.   Mama and Simone arrive for a "wellness check" just in time to save his foster mother from being killed by him!  

    It makes me wonder how often do social workers come across murders who are teenagers, or even children!  I bet it's more often than we'd care to think about.  

    In Simone's case, it turns out that the man Cheryl shot was not only a serial child stalker, kidnapper, rapist, AND murderer!!! He was also born a hermaphrodite and hated women.  Turns out Cheryl was one of his victims - the only one who ever managed to get away.  She remembered him when she saw but she didn't remember why she knew him.  She says that she got intensly sexual feelings from the sight of his face!    So she stalked him trying to recover her memory.   She shot him...but she did not kill him.  

    At first I was disturbed and insulted by the idea, that a victim of molestation would be arroused by the sight of her attacker so many years ago.  But knowing the author's background she likely pulled this detail from real life research she's done, maybe real interviews.  The idea is iky, but profound; scary and educational and all those things I love in a good book.  

    And while I appreciate the driving force  behind the mystery....how did she shoot him without killing him!  I do not like the conclusion. 

    This monster of a human being had a heart attack meer seconds before Cheryl should shoot him to death?  He set her up to come to his office and watch him die to escape justice for his crimes?  How infuriating!  

     Again, I'm sure that as a social worker Norma DeLoach may have dealt with unsatisfying endings in her real world cases.  I'm not so much upset at how the woman was denyed justice.  That would be wishing she had shot him, and therefor would have had to go to jail for his murder.  No I like that she didn't (or may not have) killed her abuser.   I'm up because I honestly feel like there were a few too many coincidences in this plot that were ignored.  

Namely this:

      Cheryl and her friends just happen to take the same exact vacation as the man who molested her twenty-five years ago - a vacation that the he didn't want to take but his wife Irene planned from start to finish?  Cheryl and her friends just happen to make friends with the wife of the man who raped her when she was five, and hung out with her most of the trip because he was "sick" in his room.  A wife whom we later learn was beaten into a miscarrage when her husband learned she was pregnant and is now suspicious that her husband was a monster, and has been looking into his behavior?  A wife who was more than happy to spill all of her beans to Mama TWICE?  

 

         I'm just saying, that after convincing the jury that the molester died of natural causes before Cheryl shot him, there should have been a last and final chapter with Mama telling Irene, in Simone's presence, 

     "I know you set your husband up to be murdered by Cheryl". or. "I know you poisoned Harold and agitated his heart condition in some undetectable way... I saw this clue last time I was here."  and "Maybe you did or didn't expect Cheryl to take the fall for what you did". "But I'm giving you a pass because you stopped this monster before he could kill anymore children."   

 Without this as the ending the book leaves me unsatisfied.  

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