Book Review - Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery Book1) #Cozymysteries

Louisiana Longshot

I love to read mysteries, whether it's procedural, crime drama, or cozy. However, I get bored easily. But I don't like anything that stresses me out, so there can't be too much violence. On the other hand, I need something to read that has a fast pace. Yeah, I have a lot of reading codicils. Most importantly, if it doesn't grab me in the first page or two, I don't buy it.

I 'don't buy' a lot of books.

If I can get a fast-paced cozy I'll read it. Louisiana Longshot by self-publisher Jana DeLeon fits the bill perfectly. I came across it as a free-read (still free on Amazon), checked it out, then devoured it.

GWEN'S REVIEW

Fortune is a CIA operative that royally messes up and a price is put on her head by a middle eastern arms dealer. The CIA quickly becomes a former lifestyle. If you're looking for a hardcore thriller, this isn't it.

She ends up hiding out in a podunk town called Sinful, which operates on its own set of rules. She is supposed to be keeping her head down until it's safe to go back in the field. As with any mystery, she quickly stumbles over a bone in her own backyard and an investigation ensues (with the  hunky sheriff being the potential love interest).

The CIA agent-in-hiding walks on the edge at keeping her head down though. As she picks her way through the ins and outs of small (small, small, small) town Louisiana, she becomes friends with a couple of older women. Although they are from different generations, they have something surprising in common.

All three have secrets. All three are bad-ass. Trouble and hilarity is around every corner when the three of them team up to solve the murder.

This is a 'southern cozy mystery', which is sort of a sub-sub-sub-genre of mysteries.

I give Louisiana Longshot a 5* rating.



BLURB

It was a hell of a long shot....

CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever—in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element. Posing as a former beauty queen turned librarian in a small bayou town seems worse than death to Fortune, but she's determined to fly below the radar until her boss finds the leak and puts the arms dealer out of play. Unfortunately, she hasn't even unpacked a suitcase before her newly inherited dog digs up a human bone in her backyard.

Thrust into the middle of a bayou murder mystery, Fortune teams up with a couple of seemingly sweet old ladies whose looks completely belie their hold on the little town. To top things off, the handsome local deputy is asking her too many questions. If she's not careful, this investigation might blow her cover and get her killed. Armed with her considerable skills and a group of elderly ladies the locals dub The Geritol Mafia, Fortune has no choice but to solve the murder before it's too late.

In the Year 2020

Happy New Year from Untethered Realms!

It's now the year 2020. Sounds very futuristic, doesn't it? As a child, I thought we would all be able to fly to the moon for fun and be friends with hundreds of kinds of aliens all mingling here with us on the planet by this year. Even now as I play with that date in my head, it seems like we should be living in some science-fiction type of world.

I know I'm not the only one who thought that 2020 should be some fantastical year for humans. There were predictions that we'd having flying cars by this point. We do have self-driving ones, though! Some thought we'd have androids with AI too. Sometimes I think my Roomba is smarter than it acts, but we aren't quite at the point where we have robots walking around as part of our every day lives.

There were those who predicted books would be dead. Shame on them! It's not true. While a lot of things have gone digital, humans will always crave stories.

While many of the predictions proved not to be true, there are things that have surprised us all. Good and bad surprises, to be sure, but the fact the human race keeps improvising and creating and pushing forward says great things about us.

What did you use to imagine the year 2020 would bring? What are some of the fun predictions you've heard?