Karma

Jill Smith #1

by Susan Dunlap

Hard-nosed beat cop Jill Smith combs Berkeley for a Buddhist guru-killing cultist In Berkeley, California, Telegraph Avenue is the headquarters for the city's strangest inhabitants. Cultists, drug addicts, and hippie burnouts wander its streets, looking to raise their consciousness or, if that fails, to just get high. And Jill Smith walks with them, a beat cop with her finger on the pulse of one of the most unique neighborhoods in America. With time on her hands after her divorce, Jill lets a friend drag her to hear the district's hot new guru, a Buddhist holy man from Bhutan. As his disciples clap and cheer, Jill tries to keep from smirking. The guru finally draws her attention, however, when he slumps forward with a knife in his back. She calls for backup and cordons off the temple. Jill doesn't care about karma, but she knows when justice is due. "Susan Dunlap is one of the best of the new crop of mystery writers." -The San Diego Union-Tribune "As long as writers like Dunlap continue to play with the form, genre fans need not lament the mystery's demise." -San Francisco Chronicle "Ms. Dunlap takes an affectionate view of the iconoclastic artists, rebels and intellectual vagabonds who constitute Berkeley's counterculture society and makes an honest effort to penetrate their colorful surfaces." -The New York Times Susan Dunlap is a prolific author of mystery novels. Born in New York City, Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell University and earned a masters degree in education from the University of North Carolina. She was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand at writing mysteries. Six attempts and six years later, she published Karma (1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith. Since then, Dunlap has published more than twenty novels and numerous short stories. Her other ongoing characters include the meter-reading detective Vejay Haskell, former forensic pathologist Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, and Zen student/stunt double Darcy Lott. In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga, worked as a paralegal, and helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization created to support women in the field of mystery writing. She lives near San Francisco.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Detective

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Susan Dunlap is best known for her Jill Smith detective series, but she is a prolific and much loved writer of crime and mystery fiction, including award-winning short stories.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A light mystery set in a semi-Buddhist self-help center in California. Their charismatic leader is killed during a service, bringing to light a number of behind-the-scenes chicaneries. The solution is surprising and satisfying.

I inherited five of this series from my mother, whose book taste was both good and gentle. That's reason enough to read the rest of them.

[Nancy Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Officer Smith just lucks into a homicide, or is it karma?

At the urging of her friend, Jill Smith goes to a gathering where the Bhutanese guru, Padmasvana, gets killed right in front of a crowd of about three hundred people. He is stabbed to death with a knife with a strange marking. Is it one of the nine dialects of Bhutan? It is up to Officer Smith, the first police officer on the scene, to take the lead on the case.

There are plenty of possible suspects, and it is up to Jill, with some help from a few others on the Berkeley Police, to figure out who killed the peaceful leader whom everyone claimed to love. Well, almost everyone loved him. There are a few with motives, but breaking down the lies and cover-ups will have Smith running around Berkeley interviewing people who don't want to talk.

A quick mystery without much gory details.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt a bit dated, but the plot was very original. I enjoyed the character but I hope that she is developed into a more well rounded person in later books.

I know NOTHING about ashrams and such so I enjoyed this look at one. The Berkeley Police Department seemed a bit simple, perhaps it was just the way things worked so long ago.

I may jump forward to the end of the series and see if I like those better.

I own a copy of this mystery.

[Devon Galena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-paced, it kept my interest throughput and it was easy to follow the clues. The author gave enough information about Jill Smith that I could get to know the character a bit and like her, buy it wasn't so much info that it overshadowed the most important thing, the mystery. Quick, fun read. I'd read another Jill Smith mystery if I had the chance.

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novella Karma which dominates this collection is a compelling whodunit, I’d give it 4 stars, but 3 for the other shorts, so 3 1/2 overall. Think I’ll be looking out for more Jill Smith mysteries by Susan Dunlap.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read and interesting location/plot. I haven't read a murder mystery set in an ashramish spa location. I didn't feel like I really got to know the main character, Jill Smith, which was a little disappointing.

[Carolina Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story and the plot was good and simple. And I enjoyed it.😎 The mystery and the colorful characters in the book really kept my mind intrigued until the very end. The ending of the story was very satisfying.

sad but satisfying🙂

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this book. I had read it a long time ago - but it was fun to revisit it and I had remembered nothing about it. 1980s Berkeley is a great setting .... learned that at the time beat officers did the homicide investigations on their beat; the homicide squad had not yet been formed.

[Marni Port · Rating 1 out of 5]

ugh. just not a fan...couldn't get past first chapter.

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable first in a series. I look forward to the next book to see how the characters grow.

[Sandy Weir · Rating 4 out of 5]

My neighbor and friend suggested this series as I am frequently around Berkeley, she graduated from Berkeley, and we both like a good mystery. Jill Smith is a unique character who has experienced enough set-backs in life, so that she is perceptive in looking at the cast of suspects with a good sense of understanding. This first book in a series revolves around the bizarre murder of a Buddhist guru at a blessing ceremony at Bhutanese temple. The scope of characters is entertaining and thought provoking with many motives discovered. Jill does well in first person.. I really like her way of thinking and expressing herself.

[Kathleen Hagen]

Karma, by Susan Dunlap, no. 1 of the Jill Smith series, b-plus, narrated by Teri Clark Linden, produced by Audible inc. and downloaded from audible.com.

Jill Smith is a cop in Berkeley. She goes with a friend to see what is supposed to be a guru in his temple, and while she is there, someone comes out on stage and murders the guru. She then is involved in finding out what the temple is about, who had it in for the guru, is he a fake, and which of the many interesting characters actually killed the alleged guru. It’s pretty good, a light book but I’ll look for more of this series.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a slight thing, this book. Yeah, I finished it, and yes, I more or less enjoyed it, but it sort of read as a...plot-genie first work. The bones were very evident, somehow. But I have read other Dunlap mysteries and liked them, so possibly it was more my mood than the book. I don't know, there just was a layer of meanness to this mystery.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hilarious, gripping, satiric, and always suspenseful mystery dealing with ambition, greed, fraud, and the very human lives of police detectives and criminals alike. Dunlap offers insights into the daily lives of those who solve murders and those who use murder for their own interests.

This is a totally involving, very fun read, with delicious touches of satire.

[Jody Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hoping for a new series to start and enjoy, but his isn't it. Plot was okay, especially some of the twists that unfolded as the story progressed. The characters were flat and it seemed like the author new nothing about police work. Writing was nothing special.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories where we meet Jill Smith.

[Pshorten · Rating 4 out of 5]

An OK cozy style mystery. I will read another in this series.

[Jersey Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first in the Jill Smith series, a fairly standard police procedural introducing Smith as a beat cop in Berkley, Ca.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

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