Review of Death in a Red Canvas Chair

Fellow blogger Irene Waters (whom my daughter and son-in-law met during their trip to Australia last year) kindly took time to read my first book and write a review on her blog. It is such a nice review, I just had to post it on mine.

Thank you so much, Irene!

Checkout Irene’s blog, Reflections and Nightmares, at

http://irenewaters19.com/http://irenewaters19.com/

****

I have had fellow blogger, Noelle Granger, book, Death in a Red Canvas Chair, on my Kindle for about a year. What with books I had to read for my research and book club I just couldn’t get the time to read it until the few days I took off over Christmas and it was worth the wait.

Although this is not Noelle’s first published book it is the first in her mystery series of Rhe Brewster, a woman just like you or I. Well that is if you are a woman and perhaps not quite like me as she gets embroiled in solving the mystery of the body she finds at the end of her son’s soccer game at one end of the field.

Rhe is a nurse, a mother, a wife and lover (to the same man) and girlfriend. She is a normal woman with a larger than life curiosity and luckily a brother who is head of police who likes Rhe’s advice, and being a nurse she can also wheedle her way in with the medical examiner. She’s also at home on the university campus where her husband teaches.

Reading Death in a Red Canvas Chair I was reminded of my enjoyment for Janet Evanovitch’s number series with Stephanie Plum who was a bail bond agent who always got into scrapes. The similarity lay in the ordinariness of the protagonist (Rhe/Stephanie) which as a reader you can relate to your own life such as coffee drinking, juggling family and job, confidences with girlfriends, food, (I loved Rhe she was a cook like me), the easy coversational tone of the narrative which as a reader you can’t help but be drawn into and a storyline that moves with action from one scene to the next.

They often advise when writing, to write what you know and I think Noelle has done this well drawing on her knowledge of medicine, sailing and observer of human life.

I would classify this book as a light, easy and enjoyable read particularly if you enjoy a mystery. I’m wondering if it will take me another year before I can get to read Noelle’s sequel Death in Dacron Sail as I look forward to more adventures with Rhe.