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How to Ruin a Vacation - Price: $12.95
(1 Review)
by Becky A. Bartness, ISBN: 978059545405-1
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Uptight attorney Kate Williams is sent on a much-needed vacation by her partner at their Chicago law firm. Her destination is the Lazy ZZ Ranch, sixty miles northeast of Tucson. Kate pictures a comfortable lodge dripping with rustic, frontier ambience. Instead, she’s greeted by a pink stucco building with a front lawn filled with plastic flamingos and every imaginable lawn ornament. Clearly this isn’t going to be the vacation she envisioned.
Kate stumbles upon the murder of a Mexican immigrant employee of the Lazy ZZ Ranch. She’s determined to find the perpetrator, but doesn’t know whom to trust. Should she confide in Chris MacKay, who admitted he was involved in another murder, or the hansome dude ranch owner, Jeff Oman?
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Biography :
Becky Bartness is an attorney and has practiced law for thirty years in Phoenix, Arizona. She is married with two children and writes in her spare time. Becky defines spare time as "sporadic moments of forced inactivity, such as when I'm stuck in an incredibly boring meeting." Apparently she was subjected to a fair number of boring meetings, because she has managed to publish several poems, and her first book (a mystery, of course) was published in February of 2008. Her next book, also a mystery, will be out in the fall of 2008.
Book Review :
Can Murder Really Be This Funny?, March 11, 2008
By Mary Simonsen (Peoria, AZ)
Kate Williams, a criminal defense attorney, is "encouraged" to take a vacation by her partner in their Chicago law firm. High-strung, overworked, and wound way too tight, Kate slices and dices everyone she meets beginning with a fellow passenger on the flight from Chicago to Tucson. With visions of two weeks of quiet at a dude ranch, Kate arrives at a sprawling complex decorated in 1950s lawn art. However, when she is taken to the one rustic cottage on the property, she envisions quiet walks through pine forests observing indigenous flora and fauna and viewing desert vistas. It's too bad that she witnesses the removal of the body of a murdered illegal immigrant.
There are two possible suspects: the people who run the Lazy ZZ Ranch or the handsome, enigmatic Chris McKay, a rancher on whose property the body was found. Kate, whose razor tongue never fails her, ends up recovering from injuries at McKay's home. While she is with McKay, Kate stumbles upon the body of another murdered immigrant. Is she safe with McKay? Will she be safe if she returns to the Lazy ZZ Ranch? Kate uses her analytical skills to figure out the mystery.
This first novel is hugely entertaining. Miss Bartness has a real gift for humor and dialog, and although Kate Williams is not the most sympathetic character, she is so funny, interesting and complex that you want her to kick butt. "How to Ruin a Vacation" is a quick, fun read.
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