The Godfather goes to the mattresses. The Godmother goes to the mixing bowls … With her father still missing, and no news or ransom demands, Kat Makris is sweating under the blistering Greek sun. But when her grandmother receives a mysterious puzzle box from one of the Family’s most questionable allies, Kat’s not even remotely prepared for the worst. Kat’s quest to find her father takes her from the vertigo-inducing heights of Meteora to Greece’s pebbled beaches, with a growing number of assassins on her tail. Kat’s presence in Greece means times are a-changing, and Grandma’s enemies hate change—unless it turns a tidy profit. The last thing they want is an unknown quantity shoehorned into Grandma’s tattered, black slippers. As an all-round decent person, one without a rap sheet, it’s not what Kat wants, either. But Grandma has plans … Somewhere between Stephanie Plum and Michael Corleone you'll find Kat Makris. Trueish Crime is a humorous look at family—and Family—and how far we're willing to bend for those we sort of, maybe, kind of like.
It's exciting to find new-to-me authors writing books I love with a healthy list of titles published. I went from being unsure I'd enjoy these books to can't-get-enough. These are fun!
This series gets more engaging as it goes on. Kat's father is still missing, and she is being stumped at every turn by the people she'd expected to help her. The number assassins on her tail grows as the book goes on, and as we follow Kat around Greece (the descriptions of Greece are delightfully rich, also the descriptions of food are delightful), more characters are revealed to us and they are all as well rounded as each other.
2020 347. Someone is dropping presents off at the Makris compound - puzzle boxes containing body parts. Worried that the body parts in question might be her father, Kat goes searching. Mysterious clues include a Greek federal prisoner - who breaks out of prison shortly after her visit. A mysterious man who wears an eagle on his wrist, and myriad other characters. Again, a fun (except for a few gruesome bits) read.
I love the characters, silliness, and pure mayhem! Alex is so good at adding twists and turns where I don’t see them coming. I look forward to reading the next one!
I have only recently discovered this series, and by recently I mean in the last week, but I can’t tell you how much I have been enjoying this very Greek series. Not only are the characters Greek - and in the ‘family business’ - but it takes place on the sun drenched shores of Greece, and I am here for that!
Now the characters are very stereotypical of what Greek culture is portrayed to be in pop culture. I have no other opinions on that as I’m not of Greek heritage, but it is very Acropolis Now (if you remember that 80s Aussie tv series), and full of sexist remarks and crude humour. I like to think that it just adds more local flair to the characters and brings them into their own.
The ongoing mystery of who kidnapped her father is still unfolding, although it takes more of a backseat in this book. I’m half convinced that he is hiding out for some reason, but it doesn’t matter because I am having so much fun watching Kat try to navigate her way through her large and in charge Greek family, trying to keep her attraction to both Xander and Melas under wraps, and trying to stay out of the family business.
Love Aunt Rita, such a great character to include in a series like this. Can’t wait to pick up the third book to see what trouble finds Kat next time.
Reread May 25th, 2019 This was a fun reread! This is one of my favorite books in the series, what with the trail of assassins and all. I love Kat, and I enjoyed the pacing of this particular adventure. It works really well. These books never fail to make me laugh out loud (in crowded places) and they're action packed and exciting as well. 5 stars.
Reread January 29th, 2020 I'm rereading this series in preparation for the release of book ten, and decided to start with book two. (I find it more exciting than book one, and since I know what happens, so sue me, lol.) Anyway, this was a nice reread, with lots of humor and action. It was nice to see Kat again, amid all her usual hijinks and madcap adventures (featuring assassins and rather nasty puzzle boxes this time). Honestly, my above review really says it all: these are really good books, with solid writing, editing, pacing, humor, characters, and plots. 5 stars!
If you love Greece, or Greeks and their endearing/frustrating ways, or “My big fat Greek wedding” you will love this book. Book 1 was enjoyable but my partner and I just laughed out loud when reading this second one. Kat’s way of looking at and describing things is totally original and so brilliantly poetic. I would love to meet her! Even inanimate objects are described as experiencing feelings and motivations. We lived in a Greek village for many years and so many of the experiences in the book are true to life (not the crazy assassins or obsessions with sex although.....) and brought back so many happy or frustrating memories. If you have a crazy sense of humour and don’t mind it being a little ‘over the top’ at times you could have fun reading this book. My partner and I have totally different senses of humour but we both really enjoyed it.
I didn't like this book as much as the first one. Maybe it was because I'd gotten used to the humor and it wasn't as funny. I think there was just too much going on and none of it was that exciting. I feel like I'm obligated to finish the series so I'll try another one. They are a nice summer read, and it really is summer in Arizona already.
I am really liking Miss Makris. She is sassy and funny and the sexual tension between her and Melas has heated up a bit,not too much but just enough. I am looking forward to reading book 3 now and oh how I want to visit Greece again.
This #2 in the Kat Makris ( with a S ) continues with the grandmother and the girl and the legend. It's just Just as funny as the first book. What a ride ( in a pink convertible ) no less.
I am really enjoying this author, the writing is fabulous and the humor is superb! She could use a bit of editing here and there, but I'm enjoying the mystery and the fun and the Greek cultural aspects. It's great fun and well worth the read.
I love the characters and laughter you get from this author. The sT Alex A. King brings all these assassins to life, and the English vs. Greek langu, keeps you reading.
Although I didn’t enjoy Trueish Crime (#2) as much as its predecessor, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a good time reading the second installment of the Kat Makris series and this book picks up almost exactly where Disorganized Crime (#1) left off.
The second book in this series hasn’t changed my mind about the “guilty pleasure” feeling I get when I’m reading these novels. The flaws I complained about in book 1 continue to be a drawback and distraction. To re-cap some of my complaints from my previous review, I don’t love that the author continues to ramble at certain points and it’s hard not to skim sections, the grammatical errors are abundant, the plotline has holes, and I HATE pop-culture references.
And yet, here I am, done with book 2 and I’ve already started reading book 3 – this series is slowly forming into a weird addiction because again, despite some of the huge issues I have with the first 2 novels of this series, I can’t seem to get enough of them.
The heroine can make some really dumb decisions and half the time, she’s on the verge of driving me crazy, but there’s something about the humor and spark these novels have had that make me want keep going. I haven’t read many books with Greece as its location, so the change in locale is really fun. Additionally, the cast of secondary characters are stellar!! Papou wasn’t in Disorganized Crime (#1) very much, but in this novel he gets to shine a lot more, which I really enjoyed. All of the amazing secondary characters give the story life and vivacity.
However, this story seemed a bit more contrived and unbelievable to me. Although funny, Katerina picks up an entire entourage of assassins who were out to kill her, which doesn’t seem to phase her in the slightest. (If I had assassins out to kills me, I think I’d definitely have a few freak-out moments, but what do I know? Thankfully, I’ve never had any). She’s able to talk the assassins into waiting to make any assassination attempts so they spend the entire novel just following her around, not killing her. Not sure about you, but that seems pretty far-fetched to me. Katerina is also filling in for her grandmother, who is being held in jail. It’s confusing to me that the entire Family is fine with Katerina stepping in to these shoes – whether that’s what grandma wanted or not. Didn’t anyone else in her family have any ambition to try to lead the family? With so many cousins around, I’m finding that hard to swallow (especially because Katerina didn’t even grow up in Greece or know anything about them until a couple weeks ago). You need to be able to trust/respect your boss (even an interim boss) and Katerina doesn’t know anything about running a crime organization. Again, pretty unrealistic.
To make matters worse, something else that made this a little bit less enjoyable was that even though there were a lot of moments with Detective Nikos, there was very little flirtation and no kissing – so that was a bit of a let down after the kiss from book #1.
At the end, Katerina still hasn’t found out what’s happened to her dad, so hopefully book #3 will give us some more answers about where he could be.
I had been looking for an alternative to the Stephanie Plum novels for quite some time. While that series is still ongoing, I had become bored after a while. They became pretty formulaic and lost a lot of their humor in the process. Also, the endless love triangle was starting to get on my nerves.
In a way, the series is very similar to Stephanie Plum. You have a tightly knit community with strange customs and some eccentric characters, the main heroine that is thrown into a situation that she isn’t prepared or qualified for. Melas is Morelli, Xander is Ranger and Penka is Lula. It also takes a lot of its humor from the surreal situations, though there are more cheeky dialogue and less physical comedy.
What makes it unique is the background. If Nia Vardalos (My big fat Greek wedding) had watched a rerun of Cookie (1989) and suddenly decided that she needed to write a book about a princess in the Greek mafia it would probably have turned out like this.
This book is the second in the series. They are stand-alone novels that have an overall plot - the search for Kat‘s father - tying them together. To enjoy this book you don’t need to have read the first one. And enjoy it I did. Even more than the first one, because the humor is off the charts. It starts with Kat‘s grandmother and Xander breaking someone out of jail. Stavros films it with his phone and then uploads the whole thing on YouTube. Then there is Kat‘s new entourage of assassins. Conversations with the Persian one read like Achmed the dead terrorist sketches. And then there was the barbecue with the special ingredient. Or the five-year-old budding criminal mastermind. I burst out laughing several times.
Hopefully, the author will keep it up and not fall into the same trap that Evanovich did, who kept the series going long after she had run out of ideas.
I should briefly mention the horrible editing. Especially when it comes to punctuation. Normally as a non-native speaker, I don't criticize grammar. But here you would sometimes get confused as to who was speaking because they fumbled the quotation marks. Very shoddy.
I am really liking this series. Granted, I'm only two books into it, but so far, so good. This one picks up shortly after the first book left off, with Kat searching for her missing father in Greece. She's staying with her grandmother at the family, or the Family, compound. You see, grandma is the head of a Greek mafia family, and she has decided Kat is the heir apparent (grandma has been diagnosed with cancer). Kat has no interest in this, however, and swears she's flying back to Oregon with her father once he's found. Unfortunately, she gets a practice run when the authorities arrest grandma for breaking a felon known as the Rabbit out of jail.
All the cast is back, along with some new ones. There ends up being five - yes, five - assassins sent to kill Kat, none of whom are really any good at it. They're all following her to make sure one of the other ones don't kill her before they can, and therefore collect the bounty. It sounds more complicated than it is, but suffice it to say, these mobster wannabes are rivaled only by the Keystone Kops.
The main storyline involves puzzle boxes containing body parts. There's the Rabbit, the Eagle, a Cleopatra, a dentist, and the wannabe assassins. It's a roller coaster, but it ties up nicely towards the end, with one or two surprises thrown in for good measure.
There is a lot of similarities between Kat Makris and Stephanie Plum. Stephanie has Morelli and Ranger; Kat has Melas and Xander, and just like I'm on Team Ranger, I'm leaning towards being on Team Xander. I like 'em strong and mysterious I guess. There is another little side story involving Xander in this one too that I look forward to hopefully finding the answer to in the series.
“Crime was in my blood but it wasn’t in my hands, where it really counted.”
Kat was still looking for her father. Neither phone calls for ransom nor severs the body parts in boxes unless we are talking about someone else's.
With her sense of dark humor, Kat takes us on a journey of looking for her father. And assassins on her tail in the line to kill her. Because the gangsters don't like change unless they are profiting from it. and Kats's grandma has plans for her to take her place when she has a sit-down with god. But she has no plan to choose her career as a criminal. Once she finds her dad, she will be back at her home in America.
However, Will she be able to escape when the crime is in her blood? When she is surrounded by crimes and some people out there to kill her. Hehe...Enjoying the subtle changes in her how the air of Greece changing her..But the question is how much?
I would have given it a 5 rating if Kat's reaction to finding body parts in the boxes would have been more realistic instead of having a normal reaction( like throwing the box in disgust or fear and losing her sleep after witnessing the sever body parts)
I laughed throughout the story. And the Kats' interaction with assassins was hysterically comical. I have read the third book too. But this one is my favorite as it made me laugh more.
If you enjoy fun mysteries like the Stephanie Plum books, you will enjoy the Greek nuttiness of Katerina Makris. She’s an American whose father has vanished, discovers she has a Greek grandmother, & that granny runs a Greek crime family. In this novel, someone is sending Granny body parts in handmade wooden boxes, & the sender may have information as to Kat’s father’s whereabouts. Let the lunacy begin.
In this second book of the series, we find the same cyclical nature that was seen in the first book, recurring threats and leads that end up not pointing to the discovery of Katerina’s father. All in all, it’s still a light read with a rather expected storyline, Katerina falls into a situation and gets bailed out each time. This is expected, right? After all, it is a 14-book series. I’m just wondering how there will be any characters still alive come each book.
Really good writing style. Funny, flows well. Some editing issues but don't let that stop you from reading this fun series! I love that the writer shares bits of Greek culture. I hope to read the others in this series as well at the "Ghouls" series (I'm generally not a fan of supernatural books...these are great!)
Definitely better. Katerina, our MC, is maturing. She's getting a better understanding for what's going on and how she fits, if only temporarily. She even begins to take charge, not just of her own actions but directing others. Quite a lot of fun. Still has an issue with type-os, but quite an enjoyable romp nonetheless.
Once again a few typos but not enough to ruin the fun! I enjoyed this book so much! Perfect balance of LOL and OMG and oh that’s gross and back to LOL! Really good storyline. Highly recommended
I'm really enjoying this madcap Greek gangster mystery series. Hit men, hot men, mafia, secrets, betrayal, sarcasm, amusing and sometimes alarming situations. An even better Stephanie plum.
I am really enjoying this series. The latest story line was excellent with lots of twists and great characters. I laughed a lot and enjoyed the heat and scenery of greece
This author, and this series, just hits my humour nerve - not the one in my elbow - in all the right places. Once again, this book just has me grinning and eye-rolling. I find them/it great book/s to read after work to erase any bad moments experienced in the day.
I love the Kat Makris books. Her take on the idiosyncrasies of Greek family life is second to none. Fabulous books to read whilst lazing on a beautiful Greek beach!
The first book tried too hard but this one was funny without all the effort. I find myself wondering if the whole series so far is without her father ever being found.
If you want to binge a series, this one is for you. Kat Makris is trying to figure out why people is trying to kill her and in the process accumulates a group of assassins. A need to read.