A Groom with a View (Hardcover)

The main character is an adult version of the smart-aleck child and her friends are of her type. They spend their time sniping at the cartoons who pose as secondary charcters or bitng back some smart-aleck remark that the reader has to read. There's also plenty of warm-hearted gush such as women weaned on women's magazines like.

Most silly of all is that the main character runs into person after person who want nothing more that to discuss in detail with strangers everything that they know about everyone involved.

Her readers must be semi-literates, overworked to the point at which they don't want anything but pablum.

Jane Jeffry - criminal tree murderer.

My major emphasis in professionally published books is on style. The printed word is the last bastion of our rich language, and therefore correctness should be a strong consideration. Heaven knows I'm far from being a grammarian (but I'm struggling to learn after a less-than-perfect education), and there are a couple things that bother me about her books. Yeah, a "couple things." You'd think after umpteen books, someone might have mentioned to her that it's a "couple *of* things." I find this consistent, persistent error distracting and annoying. In dialogue, a "couple'a things" is acceptable to indicate a character's manner of speech, but in narrative, it's a no-no. Unless the rules of grammar have changed since I was a child, you can have a "few things" or a "couple of things," but not a "couple things."

Finally, the books should be read in order, and I think the earlier ones are better. The first books in the series have more of a mystery plot, with clues presented for readers, and a generally clever solution. Later books don't provide all the clues, so when Jane figures out whodunnit, the reader hasn't been privvy to the information prior to the solution.

Of course, the forty-something widow also has three wonderful kids, a full-steam-ahead next door neighbor and best friend, Shelley Nowack, and a to-die-for-guy, police detective Mel VanDyne. Well, maybe not quite so far on that latter, but he is a 'certified' dish, no doubt about it. Even better, he seems to really like and respect Jane as a person. High marks in anyone's book, I should think.

If you've read any of the previous atrociously-punned titles about Jane, et al, you know that she and Shelley seem to find trouble under nearly every cabbage leaf they stumble over. The most recent book was no exception, distributing corpses for Christmas. But, out of that unseeming circumstance, an unusual opportunity made itself known to Jane. Livvy Thatcher is getting married, and being so impressed with Jane's management of the Christmas debacle, she asks Jane to organize and plan her wedding. Well, Jane's never done this before, but neither is she one to let such a trifling detail get in her way.

Problem number one is the scene of the wedding. It is an old family estate--complete with tales of ghost and buried treasure--some hour-and-a-half west (or thereabouts) of Chicago; a former hunting lodge that had previously been a monastery. Disregarding her qualms, Jane plunges in, arranging flowers (you, too, will 'love' Larkspur!), food, bridesmaid's dresses, the bride's gown, and the music, not to mention assigning rooms to the stay-over guests, either at the lodge or the nearest motel. She didn't however, arrange for murder. That was problem number two, and brings Mel to the scene to confer with the local constabulary.

Problem number six or so is the semi-reluctance of the bride to get to the point of being able to say 'I do'. Not to worry. Livvy may indeed be married, but she's not going to be a wife. At least not for a while yet. An assortment of oddly-matched guests, and even more odd family on both sides, suddenly seem to swirl all around the not-so-very festivities before Jane manages to unveil the killer.

I loved the different setting and the somewhat more-than-eccentric elderly Aunts and Uncle, and all the big and little details that Jane had to master in order to produce a perfectly beautiful wedding. But--although the killer and the motive for having done so did make a certain amount of sense within the confines of the story, it still sort of came out of left field. There really wasn't much build-up in the way of clues as to just who really was the fiend. Or why. Still, though, once unmasked, there could have been no other culprit. Will Jane continue in her new career field? Stay tuned. . .