Murder At The Carousel Club

by Barbara Fleming

The Murder At The Carousel Club challenges Detective Lieutenant Matthew Alexander to build a rock solid case against a suspect who, rather than fleeing from the scene of the crime, is found unconscious just feet from the murdered man with no sign of the murder weapon in his posssession and no witnesses to the murder. Similar to the spinning of a carousel, Lieutenant Alexander has to work harder than ever to avoid running in circles with a suspect who threatened to kill the murdered man, was known to carry a semi-automatic revolver in the glove compartment of his automobile, and who had laid-in-wait for the victim outside the Carousel Club. What happens next leads Lieutenant Matthew Alexander and his partner Sergeant Jake Jackson on a merry-go-roound of a homicide case as the Lieutenant solves the murder in the lastest installment of the Matthew Alexander Mystery Series, the Murder At The Carousel Club.

Genres: Mystery

370 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Note: I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway.*

First of all, let me just say that I feel kinda bad about giving this book such a negative review, having gotten it for free and everything. However, I can't compromise my reviewing integrity for want of more free stuff, so here goes.

The writing was shoddy at best, horrifying at worst. If Fleming had chosen to use the Cormac McCarthy style of no quotation marks, I would not have been able to distinguish between the dialogue and the narration at all. It all sounded the same-- technical, repetitive, and shallow.

The characters got on my nerves. The main problem was that they were all exactly the same. The whole thing could have been one character speaking the entire time and it wouldn't have made any difference to the dialogue, since they all had the exact same speech patterns and methods of expressing themselves. On top of that, each character had an identical personality, that is if "angry" qualifies as a personality. The fact that everyone sounded the same combined with the fact that dialogue tags were an endangered species in this book made it nigh on impossible to know who was talking when.

I know it was a mystery story, but the narration shouldn't read like a police report. No character was given much physical description other than height, weight, and hair and skin colors. The author also metaphorically stuck her middle finger up at the "show-don't-tell" rule of writing; sentences beginning "So-and-so was angry because..." occurred far too often for my liking.

Furthermore, the story itself was uninteresting. The plot reached its climax at about twenty pages in, and after that a lot of the story was filled with people describing the incident again and again with no change in details, or telling their backstory to someone who knows them quite well anyway. At some point near the end, I think Fleming remembered that she was supposed to be writing a mystery, and so a random "plot twist" (a bit of information that the police could have obtained with about ten minutes of research on their part) was tossed in abruptly, leaving the reader with a feeling of "The heck did I just read?"

By the way, the police, forensic workers, and all related employees in this story should be fired on the spot. I've never seen such incompetence in a mystery story.

Bottom line: not a good read at all. Don't waste your time.

Sorry.

[Marge · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this book from the First Reads Giveaway. This book is beyond hopeless in my opinion. The author constantly refers to characters by their first and last names, even in conversations. A wife even calls her husband by both names repeatedly. This leads to stilted conversations and the redundancy is mind numbing. In one paragraph the words "Nick Porter and his SUV" appear three times. Also people have a tag attached to them - its Mark the bouncer, Jim the bartender almost every time they are mentioned. This author never meet a comma she didn't like. One sentence went for 7 lines and had 4 commas in it. Either the author feels her readers are to dumb to know who the characters are without full pedigrees at every mention, or this was the way to reach her word count.

I also had a hard time understanding what era this book was written in. The dialogue sounded like the '40s, but then a Blackberry reference is thrown in. I did not get past page 50.

[Susan Jo Grassi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as a Goodreads First Read gift and am very glad I did. I found the story to be full and enticing, the characters fleshed out perfectly and the story itself easy to follow and completely believable. I like mysteries that explain, in detail, all aspects of the police procedures and gives one a complete picture of the legal process. I also like the fact that it depended on it's story line instead of a lot of explicit sex, violence and cussing. I enjoyed this book to the extent that I am looking forward to getting the two previous books. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good, sound read.

[Debbie Means · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway. This book was hard to stay entertained with. The author did not give character descriptions, you would just find little thing out about them as you went along, so it was hard to picture the characters. A lot of the begining of the book is dedicated to telling and re-telling the same events that occured around the time of the murder. For the most part, the book was just ok and then in the last couple chapters it got interesting. The content of the book was pretty dry and uninteresting.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book from Goodreads. "Murder at the Carousel Club" by Barbara Fleming was an interesting story, once I figured out who was who and what was what. I wanted to really like the story, but to be honest, I set it down with out finishing the book. I know I will pick it up again later - I always do. When I read it again, I will be in a different frame of mind and more likely to finish reading the book.

[Jaime (Twisting the Lens) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did Not Finish. I won this book through the GoodReads FirstReads program, but I could not get into this book at all. It is not a good sign to me when a book has to have a listing of all the characters in the front- and it takes pages to do so (in fine print). I imagine is you are a fan of Fleming's other books in the series that you will like this one as well. Unfortunately, it just comes down to too much to read, too little time for me.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was boring and did not make me want to continue at all. After the first chapter I wanted to put the book away and not pick it up again; however, since I won this book on First Reads, I continued. The book continued to be incredibly slow moving. When I finally decided to stop reading I still did not care about any of the characters or why the guy was killed.

[Carol Funfar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little leery when I opened the book and saw the list of primary and secondary characters. I was afraid it would be very complex and difficult to read. I enjoyed the plot and characters. I am very interested in reading books based in Washington DC. I received this book for free through Goodreads first reads.

[Jess Kittelson]

I started to read this book. I like mystery and murder type books usually. It just didn't hold my attention. I thought maybe if I set it down for a while I would eventually pick it back up. I have not so I have decided that I am going to pass it on to my mom instead so she can read it. I feel it's better to pass this on and get this author some circulation, then keep it hidden on my shelf.

[Molly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so excited to win this book from the first reads give away. I stareted it right away but after the first two chapters I just couldn't read it any more. I found that they style it was written in just didn't 'do it' for me. I found it difficult to follow and had a hard time reading it, so I gave up and moved on to another book.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book as a Goodreads First Reads. Good mystery, the plot did keep you guessing. It is a Matthew Alexander mystery, however Matthew Alexander seemed to play a very minor role in the whole book. A great weekend read!!

[Tracy Allen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a goodreads win for me. I wanted so much to like this book but it was so hard to....I can't even bring together enough words. It may be someone's cup of tea but it wasn't mine. Disappointed:(

[Yy]

I won this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Hope to read it soon. Thanks.

[Shai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was interested the whole time, hats off to Barbara Fleming.