Sunday, May 17, 2015

Review: Deadly Advice (An Advice Column Mystery) by Roberta Isleib


I was lucky enough to win an (autographed!!!) copy of this book directly from the author in a giveaway from the Facebook group Delicious Mysteries. If you love mysteries, it's an awesome group to join and has some amazing authors as the admins, including Roberta Isleib (aka Lucy Burdette) ;) There are frequent discussions, giveaways, contests, and all sorts of fun stuff. But I digress...

Deadly Advice is the first book in the advice column mystery series. The main character (and sleuth) is Dr. Rebecca Butterman, who also writes an advice column under the name Dr. Aster. Dr. Butterman is a practicing psychologist and is shocked to learn that a neighbor of hers has committed suicide. Like I'm sure most psychologists would, she questions herself and whether or not there were any signs that she overlooked. The victim's mother then asks her to look into the death because she does not believe it was suicide after all.

Rebecca then begins to probe further into the case and begins to have her own doubts about whether it was suicide or murder. While digging into Madeleine's (the victim) background, she finds that she had used a particular dating service and attended an event shortly before her death. When Rebecca is then asked by her publisher to do a column about dating, she figures she can kill two birds with one stone and attend a similar event to the one Madeleine attended and discreetly question the men there about who she may have connected with. This starts her on an investigation that she delves deeper and deeper into as the book goes on. 

I really enjoyed this book and found it very different and interesting. For one thing, the book includes some Dr. Aster columns in it so it's kind of like a story within a story type thing, which I like. Psychology is also a subject that I myself have been interested in for years, so I'm sure that contributed to my enjoyment as well. In addition, even though the subject matter was very serious, the author still managed to interject some humor into it. My favorite line in the book, which made me laugh perhaps more than was really necessary, was when Dr. Butterman meets the detective working the case for the first time and he mistakenly calls her "Dr. Butterball." 

There were some parts that were slower than others, but it is the first in the series and there were a particularly large number of characters (i.e. suspects) in this book that had to be introduced. I admit, I did not figure out who the murderer actually was until just before it was revealed in the book. There were so many suspects and so many possible motives; it was very well done. 

Overall, I'd give this book a 4.5 out of 5 and would definitely recommend it. 

To learn more about Roberta Isleib, you can visit her website at http://www.robertaisleib.com/.  She's also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/roberta.isleib?fref=nf. This book and her other books can be purchased via Amazon, in multiple formats.




3 comments:

  1. I haven't read this series. It sounds like it would be one for me to look for. Thanks for the review, they do help :)

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  2. I haven't read this series. It sounds like it would be one for me to look for. Thanks for the review, they do help :)

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  3. It's a great series! Thank you, I'm glad my review helped :)

    ReplyDelete