If you're looking for a comfort read that will hold your interest and won't make you think too much, you can't do better than a Jane Jeffry. The grin-worthy titles, and the combination of suburban angst and snappy dialogue make them worth reading and overlooking the obvious clues to the killer.
In Silence of the Hams, a dead man is found under an overturned rack of hams in the storage room of a brand-new deli in which Jane's son is working. Jane wants to solve the crime to keep her son from being murdered too. Naturally, a well-liked teen-aged boy would be in as much danger as a man everybody in town has a reason to kill, and there's a huge, glaring plot hole that makes the killer obvious, but as I said, overlook, overlook... Whether Jane is chaperoning her son's graduation festivities, fending off her MIL's advice or grocery shopping, she and Shelley are good company, and that's all I require of them.
Ms. Churchill's strengths are in the delightful friendship between Jane and Shelley, her ability to describe the ordinariness of suburban life in a way that has every woman reader of a certain age nodding in recognition and turning pages to see what Jane and Shelley will do. The characters are somewhat stereotypical, but comfortingly so, and they make the Jane Jeffry mysteries some of my favorite comfort reading.
This book isn't deep, nor challenging, nor especially literate (though Jane is fond of Dorothy L.) but it is an enjoyable few hours spent among friends. |
Jane Jeffrey's oldest son is growing up. He is graduating from high school and working part time at a local deli to earn some money. Jane thinks the only thing she needs to worry about Mike is that he be careful while driving the truck she gave him as a graduation present. But when obnoxious attorney Robert Stonecipher is murdered at the opening party for the deli, she's not sure she wants Mike working there. But he insists he'll be okay and Jane relents. When there is a second murder, Jane can't help investigating the deaths even if her boyfriend, homicide detective Mel VanDyne, doesn't like it.
"Silence of the Hams" is yet another great cozy mystery by Jill Churchill. As always, what makes the Jane Jeffry series so enjoyable is not necessarily the mystery but the details about Jane's family life. Jane's kids are growing up as the series progresses and Mike especially has grown. With his father's death he considers himself the man of the house and Jane is learning to treat him as an adult. Some of the best scenes in the book involve Mike, either directly or indirectly. One of those scenes is when Jane buys the truck for Mike. Her friend, Shelley Nowack, is great at wearing down the salesman and it is a very funny part of the book (wish I could take her with me next time I buy a car!) Equally well done is Mike's graduation party which sounds like a lot of fun. Jane's other children, Katie and Todd, are also well written, Katie especially so as she is going through the growing pains that come with being a teenager. Churchill does an excellent job of capturing the little things that make up life in the suburbs. The mystery itself is okay. Parts of it were a bit unbelievable and it's pretty clear from the beginning who the murderer is. But it's still a fun mystery to read.
Cozy mystery fans will enjoy "Silence of the Hams".
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Jane Jeffry is one of my favorite mystery series characters; I return to her "world" when I need a reading treat I know I can count on. As many reviewers have noted about this series, the novels feel like visiting a couple friends in their homes. Opening a Jane & Shelley book and beginning to read is as easy and welcoming as opening a kitchen door from a neighbor's back porch and walking right in without needing to knock. You know these two friends will always have at least one shenanigan in contemplation or neighborhood issue to bat around over coffee and snacks or lunch, dinner, whatever.
In SILENCE OF THE HAMS, neighborhood political economics are brewing from the base of a few haughty residents attempting to control the direction of life-and-livelihood of everyone in the area, and the plot pacing is especially natural and seamless as Jane and Shelley's involvement (along with the reader's) in the brew percolates and is intensified by a quickly dispatched murder of the most appropriate character to kill.
As usual, I enjoyed the easy way Jane relates with her kids, friends, and significant other. Loved the entertaining sensitivity in which Jane & Shelley went about getting a new black pickup truck for Jane's son, Mike, and the way he responded to the gift.
The plot in this one has a few unexpected twists midstream, reversing direction, in a sense, then beginning again at an unexpected point. With Jill's seamless scene maneuvering, the twists and abrupt new deals flow like, "Oh. Didn't expect that. Interesting."
There's more deductive-reasoning-detecting dancing through this plot than previous ones; a lot of brain wracking for Jane, Shelley, & Mel stretches through easy-going, daily routine machinations. It feels almost as if this solving crimes deal has now become old hat, yet it's no less entertaining as a perk-along read. The surge in detecting in this offering intrigued me, especially as it was brought to a peak of fun with Jane & Shelly slithering into a delightfully silly tangent of suspects and motives, using formula letters (X, Y, Z, Q, P, S, K). You have to have been there (which you have the option to be, of course, by reading this one). At the culmination of the Gordian Knot of Alphabet bits, Shelly concludes:
>> "I like it, Jane. Mel, we've solved it. You can probably still make your arrest this evening if you hurry." <<
You can probably guess Mel's response, but you might want to read his exact words in reply to this Alphabet/Algebraic Formula discussion after Shelly capped it with the above statements.
I have my own guess guess for what may have brought on this major increase of detecting discussions in this particular novel in the Jeffry series. But, I'm not saying; wouldn't want to spoil your brain racking fun.
I enjoyed this surge of "who done it" conversations in HAM, driven by the intriguingly increased complexity of the mystery machinations; and I enjoyed as well the other novels I've read and reviewed in this series which focused different entertainment draws of a good work-of-fiction (see my Listmania). Jeffry novels have just the right amount of variety of style and venue, along with just the right amount of sameness to keep a (thankfully) long series from getting stale and to continue inviting readers into the story with the comforting feeling of familiarity.
Deftly dealt with, worthy ongoing themes in this novel include community politics around retaining property values, opening a new gourmet deli in Jane & Shelley's neighborhood, blackmailers running rotten personal agendas by using their professional standing to gather dirt from unsuspecting clients, celebrating school ceremonies from hell or from heaven (with Jane's "right-on" guidance on which slants were silly and which were angelic). As usual, Jane & Shelley's opinions hold the prizes for common sense sanity Vs overboard or inappropriate, controlling mania which is out-of-touch with the reality in which Jane & Shelley live with relish and easy-rambling-routine (which is uncannily just like the one many of us work to live in with a slip of sanity).
You won't want to miss HAM if you're raising teens into adulthood in this age of political insanity with gory causes galore (giving unearned glory to the agendas' pushers in the media, school systems, literally permeating every cultural outlet for opinions founded in innumerable pseudo sciences gone amuck). The scenes are so simply right on, in which Jane deals with Katie's toes slipping into the slimy water of band wagon mania, "Don't you CARE about the environment, the X's, Y's, Z's, Q's, P's, S's, K's (in this case the algebraic letters are referring not to suspects, but to various political agendas (causes), all of which contradict the interests of the others.
What ever happened to watching (only) your P's & Q's? Have they been lost in the murky waters of Quantum Physics, where observing a tiny particle of energy makes it dance to your music or become "beauty in the eye of the beholder"? The P's might even "spit in your eye" if you don't "watch out."
Pseudo science continues to slice-and-dice Common Sense in a never ending battle of bumbling idiots using sentimentalism to divert attention from their feathering-of-their-own-nests-and-manias. Take heart, though, Jane & Shelley continually resurrect that beat-and-battered Common Sense Thing, which most humans carry dormant in their DNA. The battle of extracting it from the soul and attempting to execute it begins with the second breath.
Returning to the REAL issues in HAM, here are a few fun questions to answer as you read:
Was the bad guy (the one who was squished under the ham rack on the new deli's opening day) killed before he was killed, or did he die "innocently" of natural causes, THEN get murdered? And what about the second murder, or was it the first, last, and only murder (at least for that week in the Jeffry/Nowack neighborhood)?
In some ways this plot, even as entertainingly convoluted, back-stepping, and back-stabbing as it was, read like a fun & fancy, well-choreographed line dance with each stepper in sensual-rhythmic-synch.
Appreciating An Author-in-stride,
Linda G. Shelnutt |
| Hams are relevant to delis and lawyers. A lawyer appears under a rack of hams. Robert Stonecipher has made a nuisance of himself in the community trying to shut down people's businesses. Two mothers, Shelley and Jane, are bored with Cub Scouts and school awards assemblies and decide to team up to thwart Robert Stonecipher. Everyone shows up for the opening of a new deli and, as previously mentioned, Stonecipher is discovered under a rack of hams. Under the circumstances nearly everyone in the community is a suspect until it is learned that Stonecipher died of natural causes. Next his secretary departs life and her death renews the efforts of the police officer, Mel, Jane's friend, to trace the possiblity that some people were being blackmailed by the pair. The solution to the mystery is of the psychological kind and is well done. The women, Jane and Shelley, along with Jane's son Mike, and Mel are delightfully rendered by the author. |
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"Cozy in suburbia"
"Enjoyable Cozy Mystery"