Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Ill-Gotten Panes

Title: Ill-Gotten Panes
Author: Jennifer McAndrews
Published: July 1st 2014 by Berkley
Format: Paperback, 304 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: Stained-Glass #1

What started good and ended well, lost its identity somewhere in the middle.

Georgia Kelly is heading back to Wenwood, New York, where she had spent some of her childhood with her grandfather. After a little discussed banking scandal that ending up with Georgia out of a job and a fiancé that invited her to leave, Georgia found herself returning to the place that she thought of as safe.

Thinking that Wenwood would be a nice reprieve from her drama, she is swirled into town gossip and innuendo when her grandfather is accused of killing the owner of the hardware store. That is where the story starts to fall apart.

You have the police that seem to be bumbling their way in the investigation, a contractor that is desperate to get his project back on track, a small town dine-in movie theater that is barely surviving, a kitten dumped in a yard, the owner of an antique store that inexplicably becomes Georgia’s best friend on sight, an elderly gentlemen that spends his days on a stool at the local diner, a high school acquaintance with a chip on her shoulder and a brickworks factory that is being renovated into a new marina.

Added to all of that, Georgia has undertaken an in depth fix it job, from Carrie the Antique store owner, involving a stained glassed Tiffany styled shade. What once started as a hobby just might be the salvation that will keep Georgia in Wenwood.

There is just too much going on and only some of the storylines are concluded. The book needs to slow down and take a breath. Flesh out a couple of the storylines and save the rest for the next book in the series.

There is a lot of promise if only Ms. McAndrew’s would try telling only one or two stories at a time.

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