Friday, April 23, 2010
Reading a good book has been a treasured activity to me all my life—or at least from the moment I learned to read. Reading has taken me to meet new friends, visit new places, discover new ideas and ways of living I could not have known without good books. So I am thrilled to be part of an effort to help promote reading through the Literacy Campaign in Suffolk and the Pindar Winery.When I gather at Pindar with the other authors assembled on May 8, thanks to the efforts of the Dunes & Dreams Romance Writers, I will be offering several of my romance, romantic suspense and mystery novels. Hostage, the first in a series of six fun mysteries called Menopause Murders, is about a group of “mature” women who refuse to let their hot flashes put them on a shelf. Not only are they solving murders and jet-setting around the world to do it, they’re having fun and rediscovering romance, at the same time. It’s a book to reach for when you want to follow the twists and turns of a good mystery, but need a laugh as well. See the review blurb and brief excerpt below.
And meet me in Peconic and tell me why you love to read!
THE MENOPAUSE MURDERS: HOSTAGE
Eleanor Sullo’s above average who-done-it, The Menopause Murders: Hostage, has enough twisting intrigue and bold suspense that you won’t be able to put this book down.
Six menopausal ladies, and long time friends, wearing gaudy accessories, set out to create a club called “The Women on Fire.” Before they can even get their new organization off the ground someone has the audacity to kill the gardener…(and) things get even stranger than just a bumbling robber when these girls start unearthing all the clues.
I found this exceptionally well crafted suspense, told in an entertaining tongue-in-cheek humor, well worth the effort. It will keep you laughing and rooting for this group of ladies as they brave their fears, and boldly strive to protect one another against the injustices of the world.
It will keep you guessing all the way to the very last page.
Review Company: Conger Books Reviews
Review Date: 1/13/2010
Review Rate: 4
Reviewer: JoEllen Conger
EXCERPT:
I’m useless, I thought, feeling my green beret tottering. I picture myself as some sort of warrior. But I won’t get on an airplane and I can’t help knock down an idiot home invader. What a laugh, Hannah. No, not a laugh, a tragedy. Those kids at the Grief Center would never call me their hero again, and, of course, I’d never deserved it anyhow. I shivered, tried to ignore my jitterbugging stomach. I’ve got to act, disarm him--and quickly. The man’s a psychological disaster, clearly unused to a gun, but his very inexperience makes him a ticking time bomb…
“Shut up, get back in your seats,” Farquar shouted, slamming his plate onto the piano and grabbing for a bite of his cold pork and roast pepper sandwich.
My heart lurched as, in reply, Lu’s hand raised the bottle of beer by its neck with a gasp of fury coming from her lips. The attacker ducked and shoved her to the floor. The beer bottle struck the piano top on the way down and sprayed a shower of the rank liquid over the room, Ada screamed as Lu crumpled to a fetal position half beneath the baby grand. An intake of breath hissed from everyone of us. I hesitated before I moved, assessing the location of the gun, and Farquar’s ragged emotions.
He was clearly sweating now. I watched him wipe his forehead with the back of his gun hand. His glance darted to Lu’s unmoving figure beneath him and Ada’s petite form a few feet from his gun. “Your whacky friends haven’t helped you, lady. Neither did your kid. I was going to let you off easy but now you get me the stuff in your safe by the time I count to three or--”
In that eclipsed hush after Farquar had given his ultimatem we heard the muffled roar of a high-powered vehicle in the driveway, the emphatic turn-off of an engine, a car door slamming. The man’s eyes widened, and he inched toward the window, gun trembling.
“Va-room,” Ramon said, hopping from one foot to the other, then flitting to his swing. “Va-room.”
“What? A goddamned cop car. Which one of you bitches--” He switched the gun to his left hand and yanked Ada up close, spinning her around until her back was to him and he had wrapped his arm around her neck.
My God, it’s Meg, I thought. Thank God. Meg here to join the club. Driving the Assistant State Medical Examiner’s car that she hadn’t yet turned in. The car with lights on the roof.
Ada’s head wobbled on her neck, her body slumped in feigned surrender. Farquar struggled to hold her up.
This, I knew, was the moment to act, this thin little crevice in the rock wall of our entrapment. I sucked in a breath, watched Farquar consider options, his glance scudding to every corner of the room, and to Lu’s motionless body at his feet.
Cornered, ready to do something drastic.
I had to do it. Now.
In one jagged motion I reached into my own open and tattered Gucci bag and yanked out the silver cylinder. In the same moment as I flicked off the cap, I leaped from the seat, so quickly I felt Dorie slump behind me. The armed gunman spun toward me exactly as my forefinger plunged the button on the hair spray can I’d purchased at my semi-annual hairdo day.
Direct hit, eyes doused.
“Eeeeuw!” screamed Farquar, arms flailing upward. The gun in his hand flew from his grip and, airborne, struck Ada’s portrait on the far wall.
“Eeeeuw!” Ramon answered, rattling the cage.
At the same moment Lucia grabbed the crook’s ankles and Ada helped her wrestle him to the ground. Lu jerked upward like a bobbing vessel, and kept him there with her three-inch stiletto heel in his back. The doorbell rang, and Dorie, roused from her faint, screamed at the top of her lungs.
It was that scream, we all agreed later, that had accomplished the deed. Farquar fought for his footing, all elbows and knees, toppling Ada onto her side. As he started moving, his glance grazed the floor for the missing weapon but Lu kicked him where he’d least want to be kicked, and he groaned and struggled upright.. But the trail of four women, one in lethal high heels, one in a flaming feathered scarf and one in a goddamn green beret began pursuit, snatching at his clothes, his hair, the skin at the back of his neck. Sticking like glue.
He ran, shouting and wriggling to disengage them, through the hall and into the kitchen. We pounded his back and ripped his jacket off, screeching, until he squirmed past the counters, slid across the tile floor to the back door and threw himself out into the yard. Dorie was excited enough to start following him out the door, then snapped to and realized she was the only one in the doorway. She collapsed on the kitchen floor, tangled in her boa.
“Very nice. Goodbye,” screeched Ramon, left alone in the living room.
Seeking reinforcements, Ada ran to the front door and opened it for Meg, whose habitually dour expression exploded into mirth when she saw the remnants of the current liberation exercise. We rushed to wrap our arms around her and give her a loud and mixed-up account of what had happened.
That changed her reaction fast.
Once she secured the gun from beneath Ada’s portrait, dangling it from a pen, and began to really hear our garbled story, Meg’s severe features assumed their usual cynical expression. But then, there was a fantastic analytical brain at work behind that look; I’d depended on it too many times in the past not to be impressed.
“Thank God you’re still driving your cop car with the little blue light on top,” Dorie gushed, draped weakly over Lucia.
“And that you’re here to guide us through this mess,” I said. My heart was racing. I tried to convince myself the whole escapade had been amusing, even in its terror. But then, I had always been the Queen of De-nial. When I noticed I was still shaking it dawned on me: my God, it would make a story--the one I’d hoped and prayed for, a free-lanced something I could sell to the paper’s Northern Magazine, thereby earning enough to fly Kevin and his family home here for a visit. Or at least to buy a train ride for myself out west. And here I was, right on top of it.
Yes!
Now if only Farquar could be caught.
"Hot and steamy as the desert sands they walk on, Eleanor Sullo's characters will take you on a journey for lovers--who fight against all odds to overcome and triumph. Too Damned Hot is a read you won't soon forget once you've traveled the journey with them." --Lori Avocato, Best-selling Author of the Pauline Sokol Mystery series
EXCERPT:
She watched his eyes dart left and right and all the way to the mountains. She grimaced. Gripping the edge of the door at the open window she growled, causing him to jump.
“My God, why are you so anxious? Why do you keep scanning the horizon like that? I know there are dangers in the desert, but what exactly are you afraid of?”
He shrugged and bent to kiss her knuckles resting on the edge of the car door. “Let me do the worrying, will you, honey?” His easygoing grin almost convinced her.
She clenched her teeth. I don’t need another man giving me orders, taking care of me—as badly as they do it. I need to be a partner here. “You’re not getting away that easy. Come on, what’s bothering you?”
“Lanie,” he said softly, reaching into the open window and gripping her chin tenderly in his fist, stroking her reddened cheeks and swollen lips. “I didn’t want you to worry. I would have told you after I check out certain things.”
“Tell me now, Teodoro Caliente,” she demanded, her heart twisting in her chest.
He puffed out a heavy breath. “It’s Jen’s grandmother. Marva just told me today, the old lady has somebody watching me—detectives.”
“Detec—! But why? Where?”
He shrugged. “Checking that I make a good home for Jenna, I guess.” He gestured toward the hills. “Out there, somewhere. Maybe with high tech spying stuff. Night-vision goggles, the works. Old man Ferand told her.”
She shivered. “But that’s…too weird. And you let me…swim naked in the hot tub?”
He shrugged. A chuckle rose up in his throat, as he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger again. “I didn’t know you’d sneak out,” he said lamely. “At least I got you indoors before things got any more graphic.”
“Sneak? You’re the sneak! You could have ‘fessed up!” she snapped. “Get in here!” She pulled him by a hank of hair until his whole head was squeezed through the window. Then she kissed him long enough to erase the worry lines on his sweet dark face.
“We’ll meet at my place then,” she decided. “He won’t find us in those identical tin boxes. Hey, I’m gonna need high maintenance now, Caliente.”
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