One Author, yet Two Very Different Reactions

Book 1 in series

There is this one author who I discovered about a year ago, maybe two, and her name is Karen E. Olson. She writes mysteries in a sub-genre called "Cozy Mysteries" or "Amateur Mysteries", where the lead is a normal person who somehow gets mixed up in a murder mystery and ends up sleuthing their way to the suspect! Karen Olson has written two series in this genre, on called the Anne Seymour Series and the Tattoo Shop Mystery Series. I have read all the current volumes of the Tattoo Shop Mystery Series, and liked them so much that I wanted to branch out into her other series. 

Book 1

Here is the first book in the Annie Seymour Series, Sacred Cows. I was intrigued by the title and also excited about reading another book by one of my favorite authors. The premise of the book is that Annie Seymour is a crime reporter for the New Haven newspaper and she is investigating a mysterious death of a Yale coed, who just happens to have a shady secret that the school and her family don't want known: she was moonlighting as an escort at night. And to add to the intrigue around the woman's death... somehow Annie's own mother is linked to the woman and her death. Where the sacred cows some in is that these large ornamental cows decorate the town for a week during some celebration (much like the Charlie Brown statues that popped up in St. Paul, MN a few years ago, or the longhorns in San Antonio, TX). It sounded quirky and fun and a good mystery.

I found a copy of the book at my local library and I checked it out, excited for a new murder mystery adventure. I sadly only got about seven chapters into the book before I had to stop. A sign of a good story is if, as the reader, you connect on some level with the character (or characters) of the story and want to continue reading to see what happens. I couldn't connect with Annie on any level, except for the level of being annoyed with her. Annie Seymour came off as a almost-middle-aged woman who wasn't where she wanted to be at that point in her life, burnt-out at her job as a reporter, bitter and resentful that a younger reporter was "budging in" on her story, her policeman boyfriend wasn't giving her the information about the dead coed---apparently sleeping with him means she should get some juicy tidbits, she drinks too much and her over-bearing mother is poking her nose where it doesn't belong... and Annie does nothing but complain about her lot in life and the people around her making it worse. If that's what she does during the first few chapters of the book, how much more deflective complaining do I have to slog through?

Even though I wanted to know what happened to the dead coed girl, I just couldn't make myself read the rest of the book. I couldn't stand the "I'm an embittered 40-year-old woman who isn't happy with how my life turned out and I'm blaming other people for making my life hell" attitude that Annie had---this attitude that someone had praised on the cover author quote blurb. I didn't find Annie a "sharp new voice" or a "heroine that doesn't take crap from anyone" (I think that's a condensed version of the cover blurb), but just an annoying slightly-entitled middle-class woman who I am around all the time at my retail job. Perhaps later in the story she starts looking for something to make her life better, or not being so cranky and annoyed with people around her; she'll stop floundering in the vast ocean that is life and make some plans to get her life on track again.

Book 2 in the series

Now, compare that heroine with Brett Kavanaugh, in the Tattoo Shop Mystery series. She is a complete 180* from Annie. She is the owner of a tattoo parlor in Las Vegas, is successful and happy with her job and chosen profession, even if her mother isn't terribly thrilled with this choice. She has good friends who are also her employees; she lives with her brother, who is a member of the LVPD, and she is overall happy with her lot in life. True, she wishes she could find Mr. Right and sometimes it doesn't work out with the guys, but that's life. Brett gets mixed up in some murder mysteries that somehow link the crimes to tattoos, and sometimes Brett herself (the bad guys try to frame her for the crimes), and she tries to figure out the truth so she can clear her name, or other people of the crime. Brett is a positive woman and in the first two or three chapters of the first book (The Missing Link) I was genuinely interested in learning what happened to Brett and Bitsy and Jeff and all the others at the Painted Lady tattoo shop. She is feisty and determined, sometimes too stubborn for her own good, but is a strong woman. Unlike the beleaguered and floundering Annie.

This was an interesting example of how one author can have a wide repertoire of styles for characters and stories. I suppose that if an author writes a stereotyped or pigeon-holed type of character, then after a while the reader would get bored with the author's style. We have a little inside joke at Barnes & Noble (where I work) that Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel's books are all pretty much the same formulaic story with just different character names and place names. I mean, those two women have written so many books---they take up multiple shelves at work!---you'd think they'd run out of original plot fodder after a while. 

Book 4

Now, this wouldn't be much of a review if I didn't give the books a rating on my review scale. 1 (hari kari) to 10 (literary orgasmic bliss), I give Sacred Cows a score of 4. I don't think it would be that fair if I gave it a score any lower since I didn't actually finish it, but I couldn't justify a halfway score of 5 because of what I had read. I give the Tattoo Shop Mystery Series an average score of 8.25. The most recent book, Ink Flamingos, was simply amazing (an honest page-turner that one was!), and gave that average score a good boost. 

So I would recommend reading the Tattoo Shop Mystery series if you want some good, quick reads for a lazy day or a rainy day, or a beach read. The Annie Seymour series... well, I'll just give you a warning to read at your own risk. I know everyone has different tastes, and also different perceptions of things, so maybe that will be a good series for you. Hopefully if you do decide to check out that series, you have a better experience than I did.