Book Review: Mama Does Time by Deborah Sharp (Mace Bauer #1)

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Great characters

Cons: Story pacing and climax

The Bottom Line:

Characters to love

But the book loses a star

Story pacing off

Warning: Dead Bodies in Your Trunk Lead to to Jail Time

The last thing I need is another author to follow.  I am currently several books behind on my to be read pile and falling further behind all the time.  And yet I still picked up Mama Does Time, the first mystery by Deborah Sharp.  You guessed it.  While it had some weaknesses, I will be looking for the sequel.

Mace Bauer was looking forward to a nice quiet evening at home, but that was before Mama called from jail.  Seems the body of a man was found in her trunk, and the nice, new detective in the little town of Himmarshee, Florida, seems to think that makes her a suspect.  Mace knows that can't be the case, but the detective just won't listen.  And so Mace starts poking around to find a better suspect.  Can she prove her mother isn't a murderer?

I had heard this described as a comic mystery.  Frankly, it takes quite a bit to get me to laugh at a book. (But I'll laugh at the stupidest jokes on a sitcom.  Go figure.)  I did chuckle a few times at this book.  While I wasn't laughing hard, I would definitely say I was amused.

And that amusement came from the characters.  Mace is the middle child, and her sisters are in the book as well.  All three of them are very distinct characters, and watching them interact is quite amusing.  Throw in Mama, and you've got yourself a quartet of leads who are hard to forget.

Likewise, the suspects introduced here are quite memorable.  I never had trouble remembering who any of them were as they danced in and out of the story.

The real weakness in the book comes from the story.  It starts strong with hardly an introduction before the action gets started.  However, it stalls out at times over the course of the book.  I'm not quite sure where the pacing issues come into play, since it really did feel like the story was moving forward.  It just seemed like we got caught up in details we didn't need at times.  Some of them came back into play later in the book, but others didn't.  The climax, while exiting, was also weaker than it could have been. 

Deborah Sharp's background is as a newspaper reporter, and that shows in the writing.  For a debut novel, it is strong and assured.  I easily got caught up in the events every time I picked up the book.

Despite the pacing issues, I really did enjoy Mama Does Time.  Now, if I can just figure out when I'll have time to work the sequel into my reading schedule.