Name: Martinis & Mayhem
ISBN: 9781322867137

Donald Bain

Jessica Fletcher

Jessica, while promoting her new book in San Francisco, visits a women's prison and afterwards find a diary slipped into her bag. After reading the contents she suspects that an inmate is wrongly convicted of murder and begins her investigation, not realizing just how risky that could be.

A Murder, She Wrote Mystery : a Novel

Martinis & Mayhem

Giulia Pianta

Another nice book following Jessica in her adventures.
I will never stop saying how much I like this type of cozy. comforting mysteries.
I have to say, the plot for this one wasn't the most exciting one. Not much really happens and there is no murder on page, as she is trying to free a woman from jail. I didn't really like this, I prefer the kind of mysteries where you bump into the corpse and work to solve the crime.

Here the mystery itself was also quite simple, and the solution wasn't that far-fetched. Jessica is spoon-fed the information she needs to solve it so I wouldn't really say it keeps you on edge.

However, I liked it enough. There was a lot of Jessica going around San Francisco and seeing nice places (I have never been there so I didn't know much about it, and it was quite cool), and quite a bit of her going for interviews.

A big chuck was taken by George Sutherland. He is adorable and charming and I can picture him perfectly and I can get why she likes him so much. But their meetings and the talking about their feelings is just too much. I guess they had to introduce one of the next books, taking place in his Scottish castle/house, but I was growing a bit bored of them going on dates and him being protective of her. Jessica in the TV series has no love interest, and she is very independent and fullfilled without a boyfriend. So I don't really get why they had to push for this storyline.
I mean, I don't mind some changes as this is another medium and some other characters can be introduced, but I would have preferred for George to have a more marginal role and let more space to the actual plot.
I have read mutliple books in a random order and I think I remember the newest ones do not have him starring so heavily (or maybe this is my wishful thinking).

All in all, it is always a nice pleasure to read Jessica's books, they are light and quick, and this one was a good example of this.

Martinis & Mayhem A Murder, She Wrote Mystery : a Novel