Book Review: The Case of the Fickle Mermaid

The Case of the Fickle Mermaid: A Brothers Grimm Mystery by P.J. Brackston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gretel (yes, that Gretel) of Gesternstadt is off on another case. This time she travels far from her home in Bavaria to help Captain Tobias Ziegler of the “cruise ship” Arabella and solve the mystery of his missing sailors. A mermaid’s song has either scared off these superstitious nautical types for good or the siren has lured them to their deaths. Whatever the cause of the Arabella’s missing mates, Gretel grabs the chance for a luxurious cruise and a bit of much needed cash to boot. She packs her numerous clothing trunks, personally carries her most divine and expensive wig, and forces her brother Hans to act as her porter and bodyguard.

Alas, the Arabella isn’t the glamorous cruise ship Gretel thought it would be. She and Hans are forced to share a cabin no bigger than a closet with a smelly “mer-hund”. Hans is tormented by his “old love” Birgit who still has it in for him. Captain Ziegler looks vaguely familiar to Gretel in a nefarious way. And what’s up with the proper and grim quartermaster Herr Hoffman? Gretel wonders if the rival cruise line owner, Thorsten Sommer, isn’t behind the mysterious mermaid’s song. Why oh why does her own fancy, the dashing Uber General Ferdinand Von Ferdinand, have to be aboard the Fair Fortune with the stuffy Baroness Schleswig-Holstein cruising nearby? When the Arabella’s chef is found murdered in a lifeboat aboard the Fair Fortune, Gretel senses perhaps it isn’t a business rivalry or a mythical creature behind these crew disappearances.

The Case of the Fickle Mermaid is the third book in P.J. Brackston’s “Brothers Grimm Mysteries” and is part cozy mystery, part comedic-masterpiece and part fairy tale. Gretel uses her sharp wits and her voracious appetite for both food and life to sift through a cast of suspects who will make you split your sides with laughter. There’s the fickle mermaid, of course, along with the bird-obsessed Dr. Becker, the inept henchmen Cat’s Tongue and Pustule, the drunken culinary genius Frenchie (who takes Hans under his wing and teaches him even more about food), and a naughty sea sprite that no one but Gretel can see or talk to. This is the perfect book for the mystery lover who enjoys a happily ever after tale along with a little murder and mayhem along the way.


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My Sexy Saturday -- Happy Halloween!

This week's My Sexy Saturday blog hop postings are supposed to revolve around Halloween. Excerpts are supposed to come from spooky, scary, frightening, or chilling adventures where your hero/heroine meet and get into a lot of hot water or they're being chased by brain-eating zombies, etc. For those of us who tend to write more romantic-comedy than horror fiction, this can be somewhat of a challenge!

Here are seven paragraphs from my romantic-comedy Leaving Who... A scene where things get a bit on the scary side for Cici Connors when she sees her friends John Smith, Captain Mac and Babbling Brook as they really are and not as she normally perceives them.

Leaving Who
from Mojocastle Press

After touring the universe with the sometimes inept time traveler John Smith, Cici Connors wants one more thing—to go home. Will the imminent destruction of Earth throw a kink into her plans? 

“She looks different than when she first came through the door, you mean,” I repeated. “Please tell me she is one of your lot.” Before the words had left my lips the figure in front of me blurred and reformed into the image of tattered dress-wearing Idris, better known as the Doctor’s wife. “She’s… she’s done it again!”

Captain Mac sat beside me and put an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t fight it, Cici. Your mind is trying to find the best way to represent what she is. She’s a tough one to get a handle on—even for us.”

“You mean you see her as a multitude of personas, too?”

“I mean I see her like I’ve always seen her—like how I see John and myself. We’re not human so we don’t have to visualize each other as humans would.”

“You’re saying you don’t even remotely resemble the way I’ve imagined you?”

I looked at Mac’s hand resting on my arm. Suddenly the hand lost its five fingers as they melted together and began to curl upwards, rapidly changing from a human flesh tone into a bright mauve color. The arm became a tentacle and flowed into a solid blob instead of a torso. I willed myself to look into his face and then at the faces of John and our female guest…morphing and blurring into a pinkish, purplish, grayish mass of endless eyes and tentacle-like appendages and fangs dripping saliva and…

I passed out for the second time in as many days.

Leaving Who and Loving Who are available in e-formats and print from Mojocastle Press, Amazon and wherever fine ebooks are sold online. (Coming soon: Losing Who--is it the end for Cici and John Smith, or has Cici just lost her mind once too often?)

Enjoy the rest of the My Sexy Saturday excerpts!

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Book Reviews: God Emperor of Didcot and Wrath of the Lemming Men

God Emperor of Didcot by Toby Frost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The British Space Empire's source of tea is threatened. Who better than Captain Isambard Smith to take on the evil ant people, the Ghasts, and their righteously right-winged allies, the New Edenites, along with the Great God Emperor Hyrax of Didcot? God Emperor of Didcot is a fitting sequel to Frost's Space Captain Smith with all of the wacky characters you came to know and love in the first tale along with some new weird friends. The M'Lak have become metrosexual accountants and architects rather than blood-thirsty warriors. Suruk has to convince his family members that sometimes you have to get your golf sweater dirtied in battle in order to really live. Will Polly ever find her hitman crush? Will Smith ever get up the nerve to tell space hippy Rhianna that he really cares for her? All this and water-tankfuls of morally uplifting tea awaits the happy reader.


Wrath of the Lemming Men by Toby Frost
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

They're furry and they belong in a cage to deal with their rage. Space Captain Smith is destined to battle the Yull, homicidal/suicidal rodent-like aliens, and prevent them from taking over British Space in Wrath of the Lemming Men. The same crazy crew of the John Pym is back, and the camaraderie is the high point of this third action tale. Polly the Simulant is sent on an undercover mission to teach other androids the basics of self-defense and learns a bit more about Jane Austen than necessary. Surak the Slayer seeks revenge against Colonel Vock of Yull, and Rhianna the Space Hippy gets a chance to learn more about her Vorl father. Major Wainscot and the members of DOG come out fighting with panache and occasionally no pants. All the while, Smith handles the violence with typical British reserve along with, of course, tea. Hopefully we'll see more adventures with these characters to come.

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Book Review: Space Captain Smith

Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you're looking for a good time sf/fantasy read without a lot of heavy thinking involved, look no further than to Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith. The first of a series, Isambard Smith's saga is full of farce and fun, puns and double entendre galore. Smith longs for a space command but when he's given a spaceship (from the bottom of the heap of course) and a female simulant pilot named Pollyanna (with a very shady past), he chooses to take along his head-hunting warrior alien friend Suruk for back up. Wise plan it is, too, as those nasty space ants, The Ghast, want his passenger, space hippy Rhianna, for their own evil purposes to dominate the galaxy. Fortunately for Captain Smith even though Rhianna is a pacifist she's got her own special means of self-preservation. For those who think the sun never set on the British Empire--instead it headed for the stars and did its best to "civilize" the rest of the universe with tea and handlebar moustaches--the Space Captain Smith series will provide just the right amount of comedy, adventure, and "moral fibre" to entertain. So...how about a cuppa?

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