Blog Hop favorite authors!

This week's blog hop asked what our favorite authors are and why. I enjoy so many it's hard to narrow it down but here are a couple. I love Anne Rice, her writing is so good and I've always been a fan of vampires and no vampire beats Lestat! I just started reading her Angel series and that same quality is there-I'm loving it.
Another favorite is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is the best detective ever-no other detective will ever be greater and so many try to copy him. I love mysteries and Sherlock Holmes is the best.
Happy Reading & Good Coffee,
Lorie Ham

Mystery book review

Since I've been swamped with my new online magazine lately, Kings River Life http://KingsRiverLife.com, I haven't posted anything in a couple of weeks. Finally here is a book review done by Cindy Chow, DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM By Elizabeth Zelvin. Consider adding this to your summer reading list.
And if you're looking for a free mystery read online my mystery novel, DEADLY DISCRIMINATION, is being serialized on my magazine-check it out at http://kingsriverlife.com/05/29/deadly-discrimination/ there you can start with chapter 1, but there are now 6 chapters on the site, with a new one every week.
Happy Reading & Good Coffee,
Lorie Ham

DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM
By Elizabeth Zelvin
St. Martin’s Minotaur, $25.99
ISBN: 978-0312582661, 10/09

Review by Cindy Chow

Death Will Help You Leave Him is a story of addictions. Each characters battles his or her own addiction, be it to alcohol, drugs, love, sex, being needed, or, helpful for this novel, an addiction to investigating. Bruce Kohler is nine months sober and working as a temporary paralegal when his best friend’s girlfriend Barbara’s addiction to helping others has the three on a mission of mercy to aid her Al-Anon sponsee Luz, who apparently just discovered the body of her boyfriend in her apartment. The beautiful women had been unable to refrain from loving or leaving the abusive victim, and the fact that Luz has been a little recalcitrant with the truth to everyone has her as the number one suspect on the police suspect list. With considerable pressure from Barbara, Bruce finds himself a little too eager to investigate the dead man’s life, which included drug dealing, several stints in rehab, a bakery-owning family, and most problematic for Luz, a wife. While the addictive high of detecting satisfies some of Bruce’s need for excitement, the reappearance of his bi-polar ex-wife dangerously creates another.

The most compelling aspects of this second novel by Elizabeth Zelvin, a psychotherapist with a strong addiction treatment background, are the addictions of the characters and the various ways they have managed to cope with them. Barbara is impulsive and reckless with her need to constantly help and “fix” other’s problems, Bruce daily battles the desire for alcohol and an attraction to his fragile and reckless ex-wife, and Luz has her own inability to acknowledge the destructiveness of her past relationship. Bruce’s own personal tragedies interweave with his amateurish investigation, and both prove to be realistic and clearly depicted. Despite the somber themes of this mystery, the wry humor of the heroes lighten the tone and make this a very enjoyable read. The characters and their struggles also aid in creating an extremely unique mystery that sucks the reader in and refuses to let go.