Lights, Camera, Bones

[cornerofmadness]

Lights, Camera, Bones by Carolyn Haines

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was contacted by the publisher with this arc (which in no way influenced my review) It was a straight up 3.5 star review but I rounded up due to some of my issues potentially coming from the fact I'm coming into this series with book 27 (I mostly said yes because of the setting, it's one I struggle to find for a reading challenge I do)

Sarah Booth and Tinkie are quickly swept up in a movie that's about to be made about a flooding of the delta nearly a century before and the lead actor Marlon Brandon is from the town, his family were heroes helping people in the floods and he also wrote the script. His granddad is a senator and well liked. We also have Lamar, whose family was also in politics and is a known racist, wants to shut the movie down on the basis he believes that it's going to paint all southeners as racist fools.

So as his faction and the movie people battle it out, one of the movie crewmen disappears, a shark appears in the river in question and Marlon goes from leading man and the person hiring Sarah to find the crew man to the next person to disappear. Sarah and Tinkie not only want to find him but also save the movie (which is pumping money into the town).

That part of the story was enjoyable up until the end where I ran into some problems (for me) So we have Jitty who confused and kind of annoyed me but that's why I rounded up. I'm sure it would have worked if I had read the first two dozen books. Is she a ghost? A nature spirit? What? (I believe the first option) but she spends a little too much time taking on various shapes and tricking Sarah for my tastes.

Without spoilers, I did have a bit of a problem with the end. We get one hint in the final third of the book as they dig up the history surrounding the flood and all of what happened and yet no one puts it together until slapped upside the head with it at the very end. I figured it out right then and there and it seemed such an obvious avenue of investigation that no one paid any mind to leading the protagonist to seem well a bit bad at her job.

That said I'd like to go back and read more of the series as Sarah, her friends and her pets are fun.



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