Book Review: A Streetcar Named Murder by T. G. Herren (New Orleans Mysteries #1)

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: Interesting characters, different plot

Cons: Too much repetition and extremely poor editing

The Bottom Line:

Different set up

But execution problems

Give this one a miss

Promising First Draft, but Needed Lots of Work

I’m always on the lookout for a promising new series.  I love finding them, knowing that I will have more adventures to come with these new friends.  When A Streetcar Named Murder crossed my path, I thought it sounded like it could be good.  A mystery series set in New Orleans?  I settled in for what I hoped would be a good story.

Valerie Cooper is trying to adjust to life now that her twins have started college.  Having lost her husband a few years back, she is finding her days a bit empty before her.

All that changes when she gets a very unexpected letter.  Her late husband’s great uncle, a relative she’d never heard of before, has left her and the twins his entire estate, including an antiques business.  This great uncle had been estranged from his family for decades.  But why did he pick Valerie as his heir?

Meanwhile, Valerie finds herself attending a Halloween costume ball.  The night ends in tragedy when Valerie finds the body of a woman stabbed outside the event.  Worse yet, Valerie knows the victim.  What is going on?

 I was hooked from the first few paragraphs.  It was a fun and humorous opening that really made me glad I’d picked up the book.  Unfortunately, the book didn’t deliver on that promise.

I’m being a bit vague in my teaser.  That’s partially because the plot takes a while to really get started.  It seems to wander all over the place.  I can promise that it comes together in the end, and I actually appreciated how the author was attempting to give us something different.  This isn’t your typical mystery plot.  However, it isn’t executed well.  The end result feels like a meandering tale for the first half that does come into focus in the second half.

Part of that is because of Valerie.  I appreciated the fact that she is a widow and recent empty nester.  Again, the author is going for something different, and I like that.  Part of her growth in this book is finding ways to start living her life again.  Again, something that was good.  However, we get long passages about how she’s been struggling since her sons moved out.  We needed some of that to get to know Valerie and appreciate the growth we see.  However, what we got instead was repetitive.

Not to mention the repetitious questions about why Valerie knew nothing about this great uncle who left everything to her and her twins.

We also seem to lose the humor in the first few paragraphs pretty quickly.

Then there’s the extremely poor editing job we get in the book.  At one point, we get the date of an event, but that information is contradicted a few chapters later.  Near the end of the book, one of the supporting players (not a suspect) gives two different accounts of what had happened to him, and this was just a few pages apart.  This kind of thing made me question what other inconsistencies were poor editing or the suspects lying and acting suspicious as part of the plot.  Yes, I did read an ARC of this book.  However, my understanding is an ARC is one step away from being published, and those kinds of things should have already been caught.  I hope they are updated before things go to print, but I have to rate based on what I read.

It's a shame this didn’t work because there is promise here.  I liked Valerie.  Her friends and neighbors are also great.  I did feel like the author went a little too far in making the victim into a horrible person, making her a flat, one-dimensional character as a result.

Obviously, I won’t be continuing on with this series.  There are enough problems in A Streetcar Named Murder that I recommend you avoid it.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.