The Body in the Gallery Once again, the Faith Fairchild Mysteries stay in with the other volumes. Looking forward to the next one. Have also enjoyed her recipes.
It is an easy book to read, a layed back read.
Faith stumbles upon a mysterious corpse one morning that stirs up the already murky history of the museum. Who is she and could have killed her and why?
As if that weren't enough, Faith's middle school aged son, Ben, is being more secretive and defiant than normal. Where did her little boy go? What is he up to? Why aren't he and Josh, who was his best friend for many years, no longer hanging out?
Can Faith unravel the mysteries without putting herself in danger?
I enjoy this series. Faith and her family are very real. Middle school is such a hard time for kids, and the author has really captured some of that frustration for the kids as well as the parents.
The mystery is well-crafted and there are plenty of suspects to keep you guessing.
I highly recommend this book and complete series.
Series Losing Steam It's been awhile since the last book in the series, but as soon as I started reading this installment, I remembered why I was ready to give it up after the last one. Faith has never been a likeable character to me -- she's too stuck-up and snobby -- but the author's writing style has just become so condenscending and uppity that it's no longer enjoyable to read her books.
The reasons Faith finds herself involved in these causes are no longer plausible. And it's even less plausible that the chief of police and Dunne get so annoyed by her meddling, yet continue to share information with her and put her right in the middle of the action. I just can't stretch my believability this far.
This installment was particularly annoying because Ben has now turned into the typical big-mouthed arrogant cozy teen. And Faith and Tom's way of dealing with it is to bite their tongues and let him walk all over them. It brought back too many thoughts of Goldy Bear's son Arch and when that series jumped the shark. When Faith walked into his room, saw something on his computer and asked him about it, and he told her to mind her own business, so she and Tom left the room, I nearly put the book down for good. I just kept hoping someone would find Ben taken out by the murderer.
Unless the next book in the series gets straight five-star reviews, I think I'm finally done with this series.Art of Murder Faith Fairchild takes her Have Faith catering service to the Ganley Art Museum to investigate a missing piece of contemporary art for her friend Patsy Avery.
A lovely young woman's body is discovered by Faith in a fish tank the morning after a major showing at the museum. A women with no identification and no apparent past until slowly little connections to the gallery emerge from reluctant witnesses.
The skill of a master weaves the threads between the food, the art exhibits, and the clues to a surprising murder.
Nash Black, author of Sins of the Fathers and Qualifying LapsHaintsWriting as a Small Business Fine mystery, great backstory, with one significant flaw As others have indicated, this latest installment in the Faith Fairchild series has her taking over a museum cafe to investigate what seems to be art forgery. In typical Faith fashion, she stumbles into yet another murder and the denoument is interesting, if not entirely a surprise.
Author Katherine Hall Page introduces a contemporary element with "cyber-bullying" thread, which helps bring the characters up to date and illuminates this important issue for parents and other adults everywhere. It is also completely believable, true to the family and the most compelling part of the story (for me, at least).
Now, for the flaw. Faith and Tom's marriage simply does not come across as realistic. They are operating out of roles that are too old for their suggested ages. Faith is entirely responsible for the domestic side. Tom doesn't lift a finger. Faith holds herself entirely responsible for Ben's problems, which Tom is only too happy to dump onto her. Nowhere do I get the sense that he thinks that this is a shared problem and a shared responsibility. They're locked into a "man as breadwinner, woman as homemaker ideology" that really doesn't ring true at all. Where's Tom's willingness to put his career aside? And just what is Faith supposed to do? Follow her son around? Ben responded better to his father, why wouldn't it occur to Tom to take a sabbatical (clergy do have them) and devote himself to some father-son bonding time? Or what if he lost his job and Faith *had* to step up? This is the 21st century, but it feels like this book got lost in a time warp.
