Review: Santa Murders
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 28, 2013
This is the 31st book in the series, but the first one I have read.  When it comes to r2r books, I want ones that I will enjoy - a mystery at Christmas time?!?!  This was one that I just could not pass up.  Especially when you find out that a good guy, though not always a smart guy, who dresses up as Santa, helps the homeless and is a preacher to boot is being set up for murdering a mob boss.  This had fun written all over it.As with all mysteries, I jumped in from the very beginning and immediately became immersed in their world and the case they were trying to solve.  Having not read the first thirty books of the series, I was unfamiliar with some of the relationships (I actually have bought others of the series on previous occasions and look forward to going back and reading them to learn more about these people and how they got together) but it did not stop me from enjoying the book and I actually caught on to things pretty quick.It was a fun book with the typical twists and turns of a mystery novel, one of the things that I love so much about this genre.  The characters were fun, but some seemed kind of 2-dimensional, but this could have been because of my lack of knowledge on them as individuals (another reason that I need to go back and read some of the beginning ones).There was only one problem that I had with this book, one thing that made it a 4 instead of a 5, and that was the first person story telling.  I'm not really a fan, though I have read books where they did it beautifully.  This, however, was a little jarring - sometimes he knows things he can't possibly know and sometimes he repeats things that someone just said, which makes reading the story a little tedious.  I would still recommend it to anyone who loves mysteries, though, because it was definitely a book I enjoyed.Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.