Welcome to the world of Nola Billingsley, a 40-something biotechnology whiz with an adored shorthaired pointer, who finds herself embroiled in both a nefarious murder and a blazingly hot new romance in the thriller A Pointed Death, by Kath Russell. When techno genius Nola Billingsley finds her former employee, an amoral creep who stole secrets, murdered, she doesn’t exactly shed tears. Instead, she begins a flirtation with the inspector assigned to the case. With her shorthaired pointer Skootch watching her back, Nola and her group of techno pals try to help solve the murder, bringing into play Nola’s feisty feminism and idealism, and putting both her life and her love affair at risk. Finding a link between the Chinese government and American thieves, she bands with a group who believes that biotech people should protect their industry from any evil abusers. Could there be a government plot afoot, and can she save the world even as she tries to salvage her love life?
My take on this book:
Nola's dot com company has just went kaput, and part of the reason was because one of her employees, Roger Chen, was stealing from her. So while on a walk with her pointer dog ,Skootch E. Hurry ,she finds a body minus a head slumped on a bench, as she is running away she trips over something, you guessed it, she just found the corpse's head.Whats worse is the corpse, and head, for that matter belongs to the employee who was stealing from her.
While normally unlucky in love Nola is surprised when Harrison,the detective that was in charge of the fraud case against Chen, gives her a call and asks her for a date. Perhaps her luck is about to change where men are concerned. She soon finds herself drawn into the mystery of who murdered Chen, and what secrets he was hiding.When she enlists some of her bio-tech friends to help figure it out, they soon realize their is a conspiracy that includes foreign government. Harrison keeps warning her to leave the case to the professionals, will the budding relationship between the two withstand her snooping errr, sleuthing?
Nola's character was so much fun! There was no way that she could be overly serious, I mean come on she is 48, living at home with her transplanted 80 year old southern belle mother Janie Belle, whose days consisted of doing various things for her church, drinking bourbon, and dispensing fashion advice to Nola.
She also lives with her pointer dog, Skootch E. Hurry, who she rescued from SPCA. The reason she took him home was because she felt sorry for him, he had wagged his tail so hard against the cage it bled. This dog suffers from an amazingly bad case of reoccurring flatulence, he is a spoiled rotten dog that loves nothing better than to eat off of peoples plates, and Janie Belle swears he is really a con artist in doggy clothing.Although she is crazy about him. The scenes revolving around Skootch and his inhaling the libido enhancing herbs were out of this world funny, not to mention his fear of horses or the fights he had with sea-gulls.
While this story involves the world of biotechnology, something I knew absolutely nothing about, it really didn't matter because the author writes in such a way that I became totally absorbed in the story anyway, actually by the end of the story I felt like I had learned a bit, oh heck who am I kidding, I still know nothing about biotechnology, but it doesn't matter, what I do know is that the by the end of the story I was totally shocked at who the killer actually was! It was something that I didn't see coming at all, and I loved how Skootch was always around to help save the day for Nola.
A great story with very well developed characters, and a plot that will keep you guessing. I fell in love with Skootch, Nola and Janie Belle, and anxiously await the next story in The Pointer Mystery Series.
Kath Russell enjoyed over thirty-five years in marketing and communications management in the biotechnology industry. She was an executive with one of the first genetic engineering companies. Russell also was president of Russell-Welsh Strategic Life Science Communications, Inc., and founder and chief executive officer of an ecommerce company offering services for mature companion animals and veterinarians. Russell received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, her master’s degree in journalism from Boston University, her master’s of business administration from the Kellogg School of Management, and earned her certificate in creative writing from the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
To find out more about Kath or to learn more about A Pointed Death visit http://www.pointermysteries.com/or http://russellwrites.blogspot.com/.
The dog alone makes this book sound like it is worth reading, I am definatly going to look this one up!
ReplyDeleteI don't read alot of mysteries, but this one seems to have such good components; a sassy protatgonist, a flatulent dog, and an ending that is a real surprise...must check this one out :)
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