Josephine Carr My Very Own Murder

My Very Own Murder

Josephine Carr

NAL, Sept 2005, $12.95, 272 pp.

ISBN 0451216466

When Anne Johnson discovered her husband was cheating, she divorced him but unlike most women who catch their spouse cheating, she is content because she was never happy in her marriage. She moves into the prestigious Kennedy apartment building and she misses neither her husband nor her children as she revels in being alone and being able to decide what she wants to do.

The fifty year old divorcee is shaken to hear a voice in her head saying that a murder will occur in the Kennedy in thirty days and she must prevent it from happening. Not knowing what to think, she goes to the laundry room where she meets Mary, a cleaning woman for many of the apartments in the building. She confides about what the voice says to Mary who doesn't believe Anne is crazy. Together they cook up a scheme where Anne has a housewarming party so that they can look for potential murder suspects and victims. What follows is a friendship that involves a wacky investigation that leads to the criminals who want to silence Anne before she finds out their secret.

This is a lighthearted serio-comic amateur sleuth mystery based on a voice in the protagonist's head. The heroine is a delightfully quirky individual who marches to her own drummer and her friendship with the cleaning lady is instant. The mystery of who is behind the suspected crime comes very late in the book but readers won't feel any disappointment because the author is, without being obvious, sprinkling clues that leads to the killer throughout the tale. This is a very special, unique and exciting mystery featuring characters that are razor sharp and diabolically clever..

Harriet Klausner