megalion, posts by tag: whiskey sour - LiveJournal

Originally published at Ms. Amused. You can comment here or there.

I just read it again for the third time and it’s still a very fun and entertaining read. I say fun for Jack’s sardonic personality and the way she does her job and navigates around obstacles.

In the debut novel of the world of Jack Daniels, she is on the trail of a vicious killer who dumped a badly mutiliated body in a garbage can at the 7-11. A shellacked gingerbread man is found in the garbage with the body and so the hunt is on for the Gingerbread Man Killer.

The hardback is rather thin so it was a fast read. I notice this time around that some of the characters are rather one dimensional such as the “feebs”, a pair of FBI agents who are so completely out of touch with reality that you wonder how they manage to get through the day. But I already know from having read some of the other books in the series that just like the Law & Order/CSI serials on TV, character development does happen, just not at all once.

I remember finding Sue Grafton’s Kinsey rather stick in the mud until we started seeing more of her past and background in the later books. I remember the G book being the one where Kinsey finally displayed real human emotions.

Jack feels real right from the start. About what you’d expect for a female detective hitting 40ish, who grew up with a single mother who was also a cop. No nonsense, practical, cynical, but still with hope.

My favorite of the supporting cast is Phinaeous Trott (I know I butchered the spelling) who gets trotted out in the book in what appears to be the obvious set up for a romantic match. Or at least that’s always how it seems to go when you have a single (or about to be) female lead and a strong male character enters the picture with no clear purpose.

We also meet Herb Benedict, Jack’s partner who can’t seem to stop eating. We don’t really learn much more about him in Whiskey Sour but we will later. Then there is also Harry McGlade, a thorn from Jack’s past, and Latham, an accountant with a taste for danger who finds plenty in dating Jack.

The Gingerbread Man is particularly gruesome but it’s an interesting cat & mouse game. I had a hard time putting the book down even though I’d read it twice before and remembered enough of the ending to know how it was going to end. Just following Jack through her days was too much fun to skim through.

Now I’m impatient to go home and get Bloody Mary.

Originally published at Ms. Amused. You can comment here or there.

He’s an author of yet another detective series but his gimmick is interesting. His detective is an unapologetic middle aged woman who is attractive but has no idea what feminine wiles are. Her name? Jacqueline Daniels, Jack for short.

As you can probably guess, that sets up a lot of liquor related word play and all the books are named for drinks. It was the bright neon orange/yellow cover of Whiskey Sour that led me to pick up that book and I really liked it.

Bloody Mary & Rusty Nail were excellent reads as well. Now that James Patterson has jumped the shark with his Alex Cross novels, it’s nice to have a new author to read.

And JA takes it to a new level with a website that he produced & maintains himself. He really believes in author driven promotion and tries to connect personally with his readers as much as possible. This is what made me “A FAN”. My personal rating system for authors goes like this: “good story that I’ll re-read again and again = own it in pb”, “excellent story that I love and I really like the author’s style as well = BUY IN Hardback”. JA Konrath is a hardback rating and sitting on myself are the first four Jack Daniel books in glorious (and colorful) hardback form.

If you love a good murder mystery/suspense thriller (ie you watch all the Law & Order shows), you can check out the first book for free on his website: www.jakonrath.com. Whiskey Sour is available as a free download (pdf).

Also look on his website for his unpublished novel, Origin. I’ll dig up my previous review of this and post it again but I recommend reading that too.

It’s been a while and Fuzzy Navel (book #5) is coming out soon so I think I’ll re-read the series again soon. I’ll post more in-depth reviews of the books when I do. His latest blog post mentions finishing Cherry Bomb (#6) too! So exciting to know about good books on the horizon.

BTW if you’re at all curious about the world of publishing and how to be a successful author, add his blog to your daily rss reader: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. He posts every couple weeks or so and they’re always informative and entertaining even if you’re not a writer. All that’s required is a love of books.

Photo: JAKonrath.com (many more hilarious pictures found in the Mug Shots, doesn’t he look like a bookish Jack Black?)