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3.0 out of 5 stars
Mildly entertaining series, but lacking nitpicky accuracy, Jan 20 2003
Beth Sherman's Jersey Shore mysteries, set in a fictionalized Ocean Grove, NJ, with forays into a thinly-veiled Asbury Park, NJ, really had my hopes raised. I have a fascination for books set in my home state, & thought I'd found an equivilent to the excellent Stephanie Plum series. The mysteries are logically plotted & keep you guessing; the books are also darker than your typical "quickie mysteries".However, there are just too many small-but-annoying errors for me to rate the series "excellent". The main character, Anne, mentions repeatedly that she has lived in her oceanside house all her life-- she's 41 in the latest-- and she inherited it from her deceased parents. Yet her off-&-on work of freelance ghostwriting how-to books often leaves her worried about paying her mortgage. What? How long a mortgage did her parents take out, 50 years? Shouldn't it have been paid in full before now? In any case, an oceanfront house on the Jersey Shore, even a rundown one like Anne's, would likely have property taxes in the 5 digits, yet taxes are never mentioned. The series has some continuity errors. Anne's mother suffered from Alzheimer's; one remembrance has her dragging the damask sofa outside & putting a for sale sign on it, yet another time the episode is related as the mother dragging it out for the trash, as if the author couldn't keep her "crazy mother" stories straight. Another odd thing is that Anne's eyes change color midway through the series; my copies of the early books give her eyecolor as green, while in the later ones she has bright, brilliant, sky-blue eyes. Murder Down the Shore has one of the more irritating picky errors: Anne has a set of Henckel knives which figure prominently in the plot, namely, the 8-inch chef knife. However, the characters continually refer to this knife set as "the steak knives". No one should confuse an 8-inch Henckel chef knife for a "steak knife", nor to refer to a set of Henckel kitchen knives as a "steak knife set". Steak knives are uniform in size, like table knives; it's an odd loose end someone should have tightened up. There are some odd references to New Jersey, too, which makes me think the author doesn't really know the state too well. Anne refers several times to swimming in the "ice-cold ocean"-- in the summer. Sorry, ice-cold summer oceanwater is for New England, not NJ; in August & Sept., the months referred to, the ocean is rarely anything but balmy. In an earlier book in the series, she also refers to an "out-of-season October northeaster". Nor'easters do not occur only during the winter as the author seems to think; they can, and do, occur anytime during the year. She also mentions the wild thunder & lightning during this storm: also unlikely. Nor'easters are not usually electrical storms. I suppose it COULD happen, but anyone who has ridden out such a storm would find it very unusual.
One of the earlier books in the series also has references to playing in the "mud" at water's edge: a dead giveaway to the presence of an out-of-stater. I have never, EVER heard a native Jerseyan call sand "mud". These things would probably not bother someone who isn't as attuned to detail as myself, but they DO bother me. These and the presence of enough oddly-constructed phrases throughout make me suspect there wasn't tight enough editing of the books. Beth Sherman seems to have a real affection for Ocean Grove; she probably had a pleasant vacation or several there. Sadly, this affection doesn't carry enough realism to convince this life-long New Jersey resident who has spent many, many, many seasons "down the shore".
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