Appearance Of Evil

Andrea Perkins Mystery #5

by Carolyn Coker

Too absorbed in her museum restoration project to get involved with a murder investigation, Andrea Perkins leaves the case in the hands of two LAPD detectives, until one of the museum's board members is targeted. Reprint.

250 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

About the author

CAROLYN COKER has had extensive experience in television, both as an administrator and in front of the camers. She lives in Sierra Madre, California.

Series:
* Andrea Perkins Mystery

Reviews

[Peggy Haufle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very slow at beginning as we are meeting the various characters. A murder is committed in the Stautueary garden at a residential museum. I don't feel that the side story about the lives of the detectives added to the story. The part about the rich was interesting and important. The art restorer is there more as a witness.

[audrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Technically proficient writing style, the plot holds water and yet the book features not one single character I didn't want to see flung at speed under a train. Good grief, what a confusion of unhappy, unlikeable people!

The book reads as if the author really wanted to write in the "Sebastian? I've found some matchsticks." style but transplant it to Southern California. The result is what always happens when you try to take Sebastian and his matchsticks to Southern California: nothing trumps LA crass. It's a thin veneer of culture over a place that delights in having 84 flavors of crazy, each with its own zip code. What a mess.

Additionally, there's this:

Suddenly, Andrea remembered another picture in the box that she had passed over too quickly. She dug through the stack of photographs until she found it again ... Andrea scooped the pictures up like an abandoned hand of solitaire and put them back in the box. She kept the last one and hurried upstairs to the master bedroom to put it in her handbag. This one, slightly blurred photograph told her more than all the others combined.

By now you're probably asking yourself: so....what's in the photograph??????

Sucks to be you then, because the author has no plans to tell you for another thirty pages, on the very last page of the book where the contents are whipped out for a final overly melodramatic plot twist. This is called "cheating your readers" and authors, if you pull this kind of crap, you might log onto the internet one day to find tales of your book going airborne through someone's house. Do not do it.

[Rachel N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A naked body is found on the grounds of the Huntington museum located in rich San Marino, California. The book alternates between the police investigating the case and an art restorer working in the mueum. There is a lot of useless information given about the characters, not much plot and the murderer is really obvious.

[Brett]

Mystery