Review: WOW!!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 14, 2013
I picked up the Hitwoman series after reading some interesting reviews.  It looked cute & different.  However, as I read each successive book in the series (Confessions of a Slighly Neurotic Hitwoman, Further Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman, Hitwoman Gets Lucky, & finally this one, Hitwoman & the Family Jewels) I became more entranced & delighted with Maggie & friends.For those of you who haven't read the other books, stop, read those first, & then come back to this one.  Believe me, you'll thank me.  The series starts out with the unbelievable hell that is Maggie Lee's life.  Her father is in prison for robbing a bank & killing a teller, her mother is in the "nuthouse", her youngest sister was kidnapped & murdered as a child, her other sister ran away from home, & if all this isn't bad enough a DUI driver kills her oldest sister, the husband, & puts Maggie's 3 year old niece in a coma. And don't even get me started on her wacky 3 aunts!  Then to make it worse, the hospital where her niece is receiving treatment wants to kick her out.  What's Maggie to do you ask?  Well, take on the job of being a hitwoman for a mob boss to earn enough money to help keep her niece continue getting the needed medical care.  But Maggie has a code.  She will only take jobs where the "hit" is definitely the scum of the earth. Helping her is her murder mentor, Patrick, a decorated cop with 2 wives & 2 kids, who needs the money to support his 2 families.  Patrick has the same code as Maggie.  In each book the sexual/romantic tension between the two grows to where you think it is just going to ignite.Also helping Maggie out are her niece's anole lizard, Godzilla aka God, her dingbat Dobberman, Doomsday aka DeeDee, & later a one-eyed cat known as Piss.  What gives comic relief to all the suspense is that after the car accident that killed her sister & put her niece in a coma, Maggie finds because of a bizarre head injury from the crash she is able to communicate with animals.  "God" according to Maggie sounds like Alan Rickman from the Harry Potter movies!  As Maggie bungles her way through each "hit" she grows stronger & more compassionate to the world around her.  This book leads up to a tension filled suspenseful ending that just will leave you with your mouth on the floor & cursing JB Lynn to get the next book The Hitwoman & the Neurotic Witness published ASAP!!  How can you pass up a book that starts out with "You know it's going to be a bad day when you've got Piss on your chest, Doomsday staring at you in the eye, & God singing, 'Staying Alive' out of tune!!"This series has it all, murder, romance, suspense, comic relief, & talking animals with attitude.  Could you want anything more????