Showing posts with label Midwest Book Review of Murder in Hand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Midwest Book Review of Murder in Hand. Show all posts

Thursday, December 11, 2014

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW "Murder in Hand" by British-Italian Author Celia Conrad




MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW Reader's Choice: MURDER IN HAND this month. Congratulations, Celia Conrad!

“Murder in Hand”: Italian Probate, Puccini & Dead Lawyers

MIH
Lawyers aren’t the most popular people, Miss Allen…”
—Murder in Hand

In her cerebral legal mystery, Murder in Hand, Celia Conrad pulls her feisty London Probate/Estate lawyer heroine, Alicia Allen, deeper into the quagmire world of unscrupulous attorneys, the unfortunates who work with them and their unsuspecting innocent victims. In this third book of the Alicia Allen Investigates Trilogy (AAI), Conrad hits her stride as a bona fide puzzle master in the tradition of Agatha Christie. The easy-to-follow plot line keeps readers guessing and the pages turning, while great pleasures lie in Conrad’s refusal–or perhaps inability–to write for the lowest common denominator of brain power. Instead she aims for the highest.
 
 If you want to roll with Alicia Allen…better bring your A-Game (and some knowledge of the Classics wouldn’t hurt).

Murder in Hand could be enjoyed as a stand-alone book if readers don’t mind not knowing the history between the justice-loving attorney Alicia Allen and her adoring cohort Alex Waterford; her investigator friends, Jo and Will; or her cultured elderly neighbor Dorothy.

The story takes off when Alicia’s Italian American client Fabio confides that he believes someone is trying to kill him. Fabio’s family ties span New York, England and Italy/Sicily; and when his sister is killed in the midst of doing some family estate research in Italy, Alicia embarks on a quest to find the killer.


 Gianni_Schicchi_Dore_Gustav
“I can’t leave you alone for a few hours without somebody else being murdered.”—Murder in Hand