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Isn't that a great cover? Straight outta Paperbacks From Hell! In real life the skeleton is embossed. A lot of love and thought and playfulness went into that cover. Doesn't it make you expect something fun?
The book has a great opening line, too:
Kramer Willinger planned from the beginning to place Suzanne Strand's head in the bed of wild violets.
Unfortunately, after that crackerjack opening, the book became something totally unexpected to me, though apparently not to ten clever guessers of my poll. About two pages in, it flashed back to Kramer Willinger's childhood and became wall to wall incest of a most unappealing variety: 10 year old son fondling mother while she's unconscious from sleeping pills.
I skimmed, hopeful of dashing courtly skeletons or at least some beheadings, but just got Kramer's life story, which consisted of still yet more porn, sometimes now including women other than his mother but always returning to his mother. And not even good porn:
He gave another thrust.
The bed went urump... urump.
He does become a serial killer but the author clearly had even less interest in that than I did, because my skim-estimate is that the book is 85% the bed went urump... urump, 10% the traumatically mute mom trying to remember exactly what happened when she learned Judo and her husband mysteriously fell off a cliff, and 5% murder.
Very disappointing. I would love to read the book that belongs with the cover. Literally any of my poll choices but the right one would have been better. If I wanted underage incest (I don't), I'd have had a lot more fun with The Romance of Lust and its doodles and bubbies.
A Goodreads review: This is a cautionary tale about how judo throwing a terrible husband off a cliff may cause a son to love his mom WAYYYY too much.
I hope some of you read the skeleton cozy mysteries! They are guaranteed to be better.
The book has a great opening line, too:
Kramer Willinger planned from the beginning to place Suzanne Strand's head in the bed of wild violets.
Unfortunately, after that crackerjack opening, the book became something totally unexpected to me, though apparently not to ten clever guessers of my poll. About two pages in, it flashed back to Kramer Willinger's childhood and became wall to wall incest of a most unappealing variety: 10 year old son fondling mother while she's unconscious from sleeping pills.
I skimmed, hopeful of dashing courtly skeletons or at least some beheadings, but just got Kramer's life story, which consisted of still yet more porn, sometimes now including women other than his mother but always returning to his mother. And not even good porn:
He gave another thrust.
The bed went urump... urump.
He does become a serial killer but the author clearly had even less interest in that than I did, because my skim-estimate is that the book is 85% the bed went urump... urump, 10% the traumatically mute mom trying to remember exactly what happened when she learned Judo and her husband mysteriously fell off a cliff, and 5% murder.
Very disappointing. I would love to read the book that belongs with the cover. Literally any of my poll choices but the right one would have been better. If I wanted underage incest (I don't), I'd have had a lot more fun with The Romance of Lust and its doodles and bubbies.
A Goodreads review: This is a cautionary tale about how judo throwing a terrible husband off a cliff may cause a son to love his mom WAYYYY too much.
I hope some of you read the skeleton cozy mysteries! They are guaranteed to be better.