High Kicks, Hot Chocolate and Homicides by Mary McHugh

Blurb

It's a Christmas miracle for the Happy Hoofers Tina, Janice, Pat, Mary Louise, and Gini. They've scored a gig at New York City s Radio City Music Hall with the legendary Rockettes, complete with sexy Santa suits and microphones on their shoes. But when a dazzling diva of a dancer is found dead under the stage, there s quite a lineup of suspects. In between rehearsals and seasonal sightseeing and the discovery of a multi-talented, multi-colored cat the toe-tapping troupe has to sort out the intrigue before another victim kicks the bucket . . .

Review

Took a while for anything to happen and when it did the first murder was a bit of an anti-climax. Really wasn't keen on the recipe at the end of each chapter. There are enough external things to drag a reader out of a story - I felt I didn't need a shove from inside it to break my concentration. The tips at the start of each chapter aren't exactly inspiring either; for example, one says if you don't feel like making the recipe go to a restaurant instead... I hope they were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I have an awful feeling they weren’t.

It probably would have helped if I'd read the other books in the series first, as I might have built up a rapport with the characters, but as it was, I failed to connect with any of them. I struggled with the writing style too, and thought the dialogue and the plot rather on the weak side.

All in all, not a terribly good read for me.

About the Author

So far I've written 17 books and made 22 YouTube videos, most of which show me tap dancing, to promote the books I've written.

I live in New Jersey in the United States and I'm married to a lawyer who is retired and I have one daughter left (one died ten years ago) living on Mercer Island off of Seattle, and she has three sons whom I adore.

I record for the blind and dyslexic in New York every week and I took hospice training and my last patient asked me to read poetry to her. Her favorite was "The White Cliffs of Dover" and I loved it. It's about an American woman married to a British peer in the first half of the 20th century.

I studied in Paris when I was young and I still love everything French, and sometimes get a chance to read in French when I'm recording for the blind. I hope to convince some publisher to pay me to live in Paris again and write a book about what it's like to live there as a "woman of a certain age" as the French so nicely put it as compared to living there at 21 when all I had to do was stand there.

I have two new books coming out: "If I Get Hit by a Bus Tomorrow, Here's How to Replace the Toilet Paper Roll: an Instruction Manual for Men" and "How Not to Act like a Little Old Lady.

I'm working on books about teen siblings of people with disabilities, one on labyrinths, one on hospice care, and a new novel called "Murder on Cape Cod", one of my favorite places to go, and a series of children's books called "Michael and his Magic Blackberry" which takes children to different countries and teaches them some phrases in another language phonetically and tells them about places to see.

I love hearing from other writers and other tap dancers, and I hope you'll send me a message at mmchugh655@aol.com.