Online Book Club: Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun by Lois Winston
Bonus points for a creatively gruesome murder weapon.
Anastasia Pollack’s career as crafts editor at a New York women’s magazine is a unique premise for a mystery series. In the opening pages, recently widowed Anastasia finds out her dearly departed hubby wasn’t the helpful partner she’d married. If possible, her life gets worse when a coworker is killed and guess who is the prime suspect? Bad luck sticks to Anastasia, well . . . like hot glue.
Surrounded by a hilarious cast of characters including two teenage sons, two obnoxious mothers and their pets, and helpful but bumbling coworkers, Anastasia has so much on her plate the reader genuinely questions whether she’ll find a way out of the mess. Especially when the mob gets involved.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical of this book at first.
Two reviews on the cover compared Anastasia Pollack to Stephanie Plum in the Janet Evanovich series. If you know anything about my reading tastes, you’d know that my mental vacation to Trenton, NJ to visit Stephanie’s friends and family is the highlight of my annual literary adventures. Could anyone write characters as memorable as Lula and Ranger?
But the reviewers were right.
This story is set in New Jersey with a cast of wacky family and friends, but Anastasia is an older, more mature answer to Stephanie Plum. The only way she can cope with the truly horrible things that keep messing up her life is to battle back using her wit and cleverness. Anastasia corrals her communist mother-in-law, clueless mother, and entitled sons to help out for a change, for cripes’ sake.
The mystery kept me laughing and guessing whodunnit until the end.
My mom borrowed this one and gave it two thumbs up, too. She says: “A refreshing change of pace with diverse characters and a plot with surprising twists and turns. I especially enjoyed the parrot who had an appropriate quote from Shakespeare for any event!”
If you like solid mysteries filled with ironic one-liners, you’ll like this series. I’m excited to continue reading the rest of them. Lois Winston includes craft directions at the end for the projects mentioned in the book.
You can buy Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun here. It’s also available as an ebook download on Overdrive at my library, so you could check your library too.
Until next month, happy reading, friends!
Kelly Brakenhoff is the author of 15 books and a seasoned ASL interpreter. She splits her writing energy between two series: cozy mysteries set on a college campus and children’s books featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.
Parents, kids, and teachers love the children’s books and activity guides because they introduce ASL and the Deaf community through fun, engaging stories. And if you enjoy a smart female sleuth, want to learn more about Deaf culture, or have ever lived in a place where livestock outnumber people, the Cassandra Sato Mystery series will have you connecting the dots faster than a group project coming together the night before it’s due.
A proud mom to four adults, head of the dog-snuggling department, and grandma to a growing brood of perfectly behaved grandkids, Kelly and her husband call Nebraska home.