Aside of Murder

by Brick ONeil

Shelley, a high class call girl, and Ann Li, her best friend in the business, discover blackmail and revenge against clients. After many years, Shelley gets her chance to get out of the business and catches the eye of Gerald Johnson, a philandering, embezzling bank executive. What happens when they meet? Blackmail, marriage, revenge and murder.

When pools of blood are found in their home instead of Mrs. Shelley Johnson, it's up to Joan, the bank's investigator, and Detective McIntire of the police department, to track Gerald down, from country to country. When he does come back home, he leaves his own trail of revenge and murder.

245 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 8, 2010

About the author

Author, Writer, Cook: Author of two series, "The Rose Petal Wine Murder Mysteries" and "Simple, Healthy, Fresh" cookbooks. He has also written two books of short stories as well as an Alport's Syndrome biography, all available on major ebook retailers. He has bilateral severe hearing and speech discrimination loss due to alport's syndrome (see biography "Silver Linings on Dark Clouds-My Life with Alport's Syndrome).

Called 'a prolific writer' since 2001, work includes Writing, Research and Blogging: performed Matrix Spreadsheets, Multitier Research, Proposals, Articles--features, small, web content; Blogging and Copywriting for large scale clients, as well as niche blogs in the fields of real estate, dating, health, fitness, disease, disability, technology and food.

Reviews

[Susan Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

To disjointed. Jumped from place to place and person to person. At times hard to follow.

[Katherine Brennan]

Took me awhile to get into it but once it finally got going it was hard to put down.

[Reyna Hawk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a good mystery/suspense book. The thrill of discovering twists and turns in the story is something I look for in books. I looked forward to reading Aside of Murder hoping for this same type of feeling. First, let me say it is a good book; it’s just not what I was expecting. I really liked the idea of how all the characters ended up being connected in some way; these types of story are intriguing to me. In the beginning as I was reading I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Many times it flipped to another part of the story and I was a bit lost. However, I quickly figured out it had changed to the other characters. At first I thought the story revolved around two call girls; Shelly and Ann. But then when the characters Joan and Sue were introduced I was lost; at first not sure what they had to with the call girls.

What I didn’t like about the book was there was no real suspense. Parts that could have been held and released later were told right away. Also, the one main twist in the story was never explained how it came to be. I don’t want to tell what it is because I don’t want to be a spoiler here. However, it left me wondering just how it would have pulled off. There was no explanation so it seemed unrealistic. I know this is fiction and therefore it shouldn’t matter; but it’s a major part of the book. I just feel there should have been an explanation as to how Shelly did this.

I give this book only 3 stars because I did like it; but wasn’t one of the better books I’ve read. I didn’t like how there was no mystery to the story and all was revealed as it happened. Had there been more suspense to the story and that one major twist explained then I would have given 4 petals.
I was given this book for free by the author and was in no way paid for my review.