Murder by Death

I used this yesterday as my 'guilty pleasure' read for the ukbookaday event and since I had finished and reviewed all my currently reading books yesterday as well, it felt like I had earned a guilty pleasure re-read.  Plus, I figured this would be a great book to christen BL's new re-read feature with, but it turns out I never recorded any read dates for this before, so that was a bust.

Remember those old-ish Goldie Hawn movies, like Bird on a Wire?  If you've seen those movies, you'll have some idea of what Agnes and the HItman is like.  (Maybe a bit of Analyze This mixed in.) I think this book is MUCH better than Bird on a Wire was, but it's as close as I can come to describing the tone.

Agnes is having a very bad week.  She's bought the house of her dreams from her best friends mother, Brenda, with the stipulation that Brenda's grand-daugter (and Agnes' god-daughter) be married on the grounds and Agnes plan and host the whole thing.  Easy!

Except suddenly someone is trying to dognap her dog, at gunpoint.  Seems a bit excessive for an ugly old hound.  Agnes defends herself with her frying pan and in the course of self-defence, the would be dognapper falls through a wall into an unknown basement and dies, letting loose all sorts of family secrets Brenda would have preferred stayed buried.  Agnes' old friend Joey, a retired and reformed mobster, thinks there's something up with a dognapping at gunpoint and sends his nephew, Shane, to protect Agnes.  Shane's in the middle of a job, trying to hit another assassin but Joey is the man who raised him - sort of - and he's never asked for anything from Shane in 25 years.

What follows from here is just pure hilarity.  This is not a deep story; don't look for the characters to be meaningful or even realistic.  There is zero navel-gazing and it's pretty much non-stop action from first to last.  If liberal use of course language is going to bother you - avoid this book.  If talk about sex bothers you - avoid this book.  The sex isn't graphic, but discussion about it abounds.  

If you're looking for a light, funny, comedic romp - find this book!  I upgraded mine to hardcover several years ago because I was wearing out my paperback.