by Laurell K. Hamilton

If sex really does assist in weight loss, Merry Gentry is probably the healthiest, fittest faerie princess in creation, but in her most recent appearance, sex takes a back seat to…lawyers.

Yes, it’s true, the most recent offering in the Merry Gentry series not only has a plot, but there’s so little sex it can’t rightfully be termed faerie porn, though there’s still a lot of commenting on the beauty of her posse of gorgeous preternatural men.

The plot, by the way, involves Merry’s uncle, Kind of the Seelie Court, pressing charges against one of her men for the alleged rape of one of the women in his court. The legal conference takes up the first quarter of the book, and then we move into the political machinations of the UnSeelie vs. Seelie leadership.

If this sounds like a really flippant review, let me just say, I loved this book. The character death at the end made me cry, and there were so many plot twists, including answers to some lingering questions, that despite the tears I came away from the book feeling really satisfied.

The problem is, there’s no way I can say any more than this without spoiling everything.

If the last book in this series was PWP, this one completely made up for it.

Read with a box of tissues close by.

by Kyra Davis

San Francisco mystery novelist Sophie Katz, half Jewish, half African American, drinks chocolate brownie frappucinos as if they were nutritional supplements and talks to her cat as if he’s a person. In this, the first book about her and author Kyra Davis’s first novel to be published, she also finds life imitating art, as she ends up trying, with her friends (one of whom owns a sex toy store, the other of whom is her gay hair stylist), to solve a murder that seems as if it’s ripped out of the pages of her last novel.

Along the way, she also has to deal with her mother, her sister and young nephew, and the fact that her prime suspect for the murder is also the man who stole her newspaper at Starbucks, and whom she’s dating…sort of.

Davis’s writing is fresh and funny, and manages to blend chick-lit with the mystery genre, her characters are interesting, and her plot works. A good mixture of froth, foam, and fear.

The few times I’ve been to Arizona, it was literally flying through Phoenix, or driving through the portion of it that has Route 66, and while I did think it was much more lush than I imagined (because even though I know better my imagination wants to see an Arizona that is nothing more than sand and cactus), it didn’t strike me as a place that inspired mysteries.

In fact, the few times I’ve read novels about Arizona at all, they were either about Arizona luxury real estate, with characters lounging by the pool and spraying themselves with plant misters, or they’ve involved bad grammar and cheese enchiladas.

Because who can refuse a good book about cheese enchiladas?

Tonight I learned about Nite Owl Books, which apparently features the work of Sylvia Nobel, and feature her reporter-cum-detective Kendall O’Dell, and take place in Arizona. I’m a sucker for a good mystery, and these look like an entertaining read, so I’m adding them to my future purchase list.