Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: Fool’s Gold (Sequel to Sex And The Serial Killer)
Author: Jennifer Skully
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 0-373-77081-2
Release Date: October 2005
Genre/Sub-genre: Romantic Suspense
Year/Setting: Current/Nevada
Overall rating: 4.75
Sexual content rating: Subtle/Sexual
Jennifer's Website:
www.skullybuzz.com/jenniferskully.htm
Simone Chandler has discovered the small town of Goldstone and has reveled in its simplicity and feeling of safety. She has run from a very domineering mother and a career, which crashed and is looking to find herself. As she makes her journey, she is living in a trailer (which drives her mother crazy) and is writing erotica through the Internet. Not porn mind you, but fantasies for people who request them to spice up their life. She takes their thoughts and turns them into a fantasy. Too bad, she struggles a bit with the fantasy in her own life.
Tyler Braxton, known as Brax, is a small town sheriff from Cottonmouth but he has come to Goldstone to help his sister, Maggie. Maggie’s marriage is in trouble and she doesn’t know what to do anymore. She and Carl are fighting at every turn and she is now afraid that he is having an affair. Since Brax had some vacation time coming, helping his sister seemed like a good idea. However, after arriving, Brax discovers all is not what he thought. Carl is being very secretive and Maggie is looking for trouble. Plus Maggie’s friend, Simone (or was she), is a bit too tempting for his piece of mind.
All of these concerns and questions come to a head when Carl is found dead in the hills outside of town. It was made to look like a suicide but Brax isn’t convinced. He finally takes his theories to the local town sheriff. He is quite surprised the sheriff agrees with him and isn’t as inept as he assumed. So the two of them begin the search into what really happened to Carl. This search takes Tyler in interesting directions because against his heart, he has to look at both his sister and the woman he is beginning to believe he is in love with. It just can’t be one of them.
Jennifer Skully does a find job of weaving and dodging and creating mystery with Fool’s Gold. So often when reading mysteries, we find ourselves coming to conclusions throughout the story so that by the end we are almost disappointed when the actual mystery is solved. With this work, however, I did not find this to be the case. Oh, I created endings in my mind as I was reading only to doubt those thoughts and then begin to make new ones. In the end, none of the ones I had thought about came to happen and I was surprised by the ending.
While Jennifer does a great job of creating her main characters, I found myself most drawn to the supporting cast; they created interest, mystery, and especially humor. There is Whitey, who the town has pretty much dismissed over the years but he is a best selling author with loads of fans and money. There is Mr. Doodle and his expressions, which pop up when Simone needs some embarrassing. There are, of course, the chickens (but I will let you meet them on your own). We even get to meet the mothers of both characters who couldn’t be more different. Most writing professors would probably say the supporting cast was too large but I found each one of them brought something to the story and I wouldn’t take a single one of them out.
The sexual scenes are somewhat explicit, however, there aren’t many of them. They are well done and fit perfectly in a story where the heroine is a writer of erotica. I would have been disappointed had it been handled any other way.
The only thing I would have liked to seen in the book was just a bit better transition from scene to scene. Sometimes it took me a sentence or two to catch up with what was happening or where I was. Not a deterrent by any means, however, as this is a great story.
Lori
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