Description
Chief of Police, Nick Burns opens a twelve-year-old cold case and long-submerged secrets begins to surface. Detective Faye-Lynn Johnson assigned the case and learns that this is not an isolated incident, the killer has done this before and will kill again. She must solve the biggest case of her career before the killer strikes again.
Norma Miles –
“I love you with all my heart.”
It was Faye Lynn Johnson’s first day as a rookie police officer when the woman’s body was found, lipstick lips painted on her left breast but she would be a detective before the case was solved ten years later. Meanwhile there were other killings and there was a vicious rapist at large. The two stories intertwine and the idea is a good one but, sadly, badly presented. Amateurish writing with a mixture of perspectives and tenses, the author seems to pursue one story at the expense of the other only remembering it again later, returning with much repitition. Characterization is plodding and flat but in neither the murder or the raping was the culprit a mystery. The sex scenes, too, we’re graphic and unedifying.
Narration by Cassandra Arnold helped lift the story, give some life to otherwise flat characters but could not avoid the long repetitive passages or better restructure the story. This book badly needs a good editorial hand and then it could be made into something special.
I downloaded The Lipstick Murders as a complimentary copy from Audiobooks Unleashed. My thanks to the rights holder for making it freely available to all who wish to read it. At four and one half hours in it’s present state it is too long to be enjoyable beyond the first quarter of the book but there is promise there, hidden in the messy writing
Kimberly Quinn –
2 1/2 stars upgraded to 3 due to potential. Sometimes an audio version of a book can “fix” some grammatical errors and typos but it can’t hide everything—even with a good narrator. As a reader nothing is more frustrating than to have go backwards because of mixed tenses and gaps. There is are two interesting mysteries here unfortunately they never coalesced into a cohesive storyline. Someone must have read the advice that “sex sells” but missed the part where graphic sex scenes still need to advance the storyline. This book has all the makings of a very good book—female protagonist, police procedural, 2 ongoing mysteries. I’m sad that they were too disjointed.
I received a free copy at my request from Audiobook Unleashed as a Verified Reviewer.