MURDER at the MENDEL(Joanne Kilbourn #2) (audiobook) by Gail Bowen

Published in 2012 by Post Hypnotic Press
Originally published in 1991
Read by Lisa Bunting
Duration: 6 hours, 33 minutes
Unabridged

Gail Bowen's Joanne Kilbourn character carries on into her second book, Murder at the Mendel. Life has changed for her - she has moved her family to Saskatoon in Saskatchewan to be close to her daughter in college and to teach at the same university. 

The local art center was called the Mendel (I say was because it has since been slated to close and move to a new location with a new name) and a childhood friend of Joanne Kilbourne who has since become a controversial artist has an exhibit at the Mendel. The artist, named Sally Love, and Kilbourn used to be very close but after the suicide of Love's father when they were 13 years old, Sally Love moved away.

Kilbourn and Love renew their friendship. Sally Love's exhibition has brought a number of protesters out because of her art. She has a lot of art with overt sexual themes, including a 200 square foot fresco on the wall over 100 penises (and a few vaginas) - paintings of the genitalia of all of her lovers over her lifetime permanently painted to the wall.

As a Kilbourn and Love navigate the protesters and her fans, Love decides to sell a private all-women's art gallery that an emotionally ultra-needy friend has managed for her for years. This unhinges the friend.

Suddenly everything starts to unravel as arson, multiple murders and more ruin Saskatoon's Christmas and New Years...

The Saskatoon skyline. Photo by Thomas Kelley

I did not enjoy this audiobook. It was not the fault of the reader, Lisa Bunting, who did a fantastic job with a variety of people's voices. She exhibited tremendous emotional range with her reading.

The text itself is the problem. Sally Love came off as an arrogant self-absorbed character and Kilbourn seems the same as she accepts Love without criticism, even as she makes cruel comments about other characters, makes plans to remove her daughter from her ex-husband (the only home she's ever known) and even sits and talks about masturbation at the breakfast table in front of Kilbourn's school-aged son before he heads off to school. In fact, Kilbourn's own internal compass is so messed up that I despaired of using her opinions as any kind of barometer to judge any other character and try to figure out who did what to whom.

To make matters worse, the pacing in this book is terrible. The "murder an the Mendel" that the title proclaims does not happen until halfway through the book. Bowen excels at long, rich descriptions of scenes but not at moving a plot along.

This is my third review of a Gail Bowen book or short story and this is my last. In the end, I was just glad to be done with it and I was sort of hoping that more of them had died along the way.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon here: Murder at the Mendel: A Joanne Kilbourne Mystery, Book 2.

Note:  I received a copy of this audiobook free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

LOVE YOU to DEATH (Charlie D #1) (audiobook) by Gail Bowen

Originally Published in 2010.
Post Hypnotic Press audio version published in 2013.
Read by Daniel Mate
Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Canadian author Gail Bowen takes a break from her Joanne Kilbourn series to bring us Love You to Death, featuring Charlie D, a talk radio personality who works the late night shift. This is part of the Rapid Reads series by Orca Books. This is designed to be a set of exciting, short mysteries. On paper this book clocks in at 128 pages.

Charlie D is working the night show on Valentine's Day. His guest is the boss's wife. The boss is an ancient man who has married the young, very elegant and very expensive prostitute he used to frequent. She is now very pregnant and being interviewed about her thoughts on love and relationships. 

Meanwhile, the neighborhood around the station is now awash in threatening newsletters and posters that advocate getting rid of the local prostitutes in any way possible. These vigilantes are inspired by the right wing host on the air just before Charlie D. He is a Bill O'Reilly type of host with discussions of fighting for the preservation of Canadian morality and some of his fans have gone too far - especially when they call Charlie D to show him live video feed of a local prostitute who is awaiting execution at their hands...

I enjoyed the give-and-take between Charlie D and his listeners and the guest. But, the premise of the story - the coalition of bad guys, the frank discussions of prostitution, the "hooker with a heart of gold" scenario played out twice in just an hour and a half just made the book seem less like a story and more like a political screed against the political right ("Watch out for them sexually repressed right wing nutjobs!  They are all twisting the Bible to justify all kind of horrendous things because a radio guy told them to!"). 

I also had a problem with a discussion of sex workers that only included the positives of this kind of work (such as helping people with physical handicaps attain sexual satisfaction and providing sexual and perhaps even emotional comfort to the lonely) but said almost nothing about the downsides, including the spreading sexual diseases, dealing with pimps, human trafficking and the rampant substance abuse that often accompanies this career choice. Despite the politically correct use of the term "sex worker" in an attempt to give prostitution a veneer of respectability, I cannot imagine the day when a parent will be as proud of his or her daughter being a "sex worker" as he or she would be if she were an accountant, a used car salesperson or even a politician.

Daniel Mate's pleasant voice made Charlie D a fairly believable and likable character. The rest of it just fell flat and would have no matter how well Mate had read it.

Note:  I received a copy of this audiobook free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this short story 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Love You to Death (Charlie D #1) by Gail Bowen.

Deadly Appearances (Joanne Kilbourn #1) (audiobook) by Gail Bowen

Published by Post Hypnotic Press in 2012
Originally Published in 1990
Read by Lisa Bunting
Unabridged
Duration: 8 hours, 43 minutes

There are a dozen or so Joanne Kilbourn mysteries. They are set in Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada. Kilbourn is a middle-aged political party worker. She works behind the scenes helping to craft policy positions, write speeches, plan campaigns and the like.

Deadly Appearances literally starts with the murder of Andy Boychuck, a successful politician. Kilbourn has worked with him for years and he is suddenly dead from a poisoned glass of water he drank from as he began a celebratory speech.

As the book proceeds there is another murder and only Joanne has the key to solving the mystery as she struggles to put together her shattered professional life and deal with her own issues as a recent widow (her own husband died a couple of years earlier).

Lisa Bunting does a great job with the narration. She delivers on all of the emotions of Kilbourn – the frailty, the anger, the tenderness towards her own family. As a plus, Bunting’s accents are excellent.

But, quality narration does not overcome plot holes, the highly telegraphed ending and the poor pacing.

This mystery does not really get started until the book gets halfway done. The first half of the book is spent dealing with the emotions generated by the death of Boychuck and an incredibly long description of his funeral. The book is endlessly descriptive (clothes, hair colors, the weather, furniture, yards, food, drinks) but just fails to generate any sort of steam that propels it forward.

*******Spoiler Alert********

Most unforgivable is the treatment of the minister who is involved in a homosexual love triangle with a married man (the other man is married and involved with two different men at the same time). While it is true that some denominations accept openly gay ministers (and his seems unlikely to be one of those since they are referred to as Fundamentalist and consistently treated as simpletons who have fled the real world by the author), they are not forgiving of ministers who are involved with married men. That is clearly the sin of adultery. In a book that is all about exploring the dimensions of a tragic relationship, this book completely ignores this minister’s flock’s reaction to his choices.

*******End Spoiler Alert*******

Having read a little about this author, the consensus is that this first book is the roughest. I can believe it. If the other books maintain her high quality of development of realistic characters but eliminate the problems mentioned above this series could really be something special.

I rate it 3 out of 5 stars.

Reviewed on December 18, 2012.

Note: I received this audiobook from the publisher at no charge in exchange for an honest review. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Deadly Appearances (Kilbourn series)