Deadly Appraisal
Jane K. Cleland
Reviewed by Diane Kasperski
Josie Prescott is back in the middle of a controversial murder
investigation again.
She sponsors a Gala auction for a local charity at her auction house.
Maisy Gaylor, a Guild representative dies right there on stage in front
of the 100’s of people that are attending. Naturally everybody there
thinks it has to be natural causes. There are no outward signs of
injury or wrong-doing. The next day, however, the police come to cord
off the entire area. It was no accident or natural causes. It was
murder.
The poison was in the wine. Multiple people were serving, sharing and
handling wine bottles from the servers to Josie herself. Was Maisy the
target or was Josie the target? Their glasses were next to each
other. The main dilemma is that neither of them seem to have
enemies until someone from Josie's past appears to be out of jail and
Maisy appears to be involved in a blackmail scheme.
Then a tureen gets stolen out of the auction house. This is one of the
items that had been auctioned the night of the Gala. When is it
discovered? - when an expert is there to appraise it for the buyers.
The big question is - are the crimes related? Or are they
separate?
Detective Rowcliffe is the officer in charge of the cases. He has
a very good reputation for solving cases. The Dectective is very
aggressive, hostile officer and spares no ones feelings in his
interrogations. He also gives nothing away as to what progress is being
made or who the suspects are in the case(s).
Josie is paranoid - is someone trying to kill her? - is someone trying
to ruin her reputation? She needs to move fast and figure out what’s
going on before her business reputation is in ruins. She feels the
police are just not moving fast enough. With the help of Wes, a
reporter for the local paper, she starts her own investigation. There
are multiple suspects and many secrets uncovered before the truth comes
out.
In Deadly Appraisal Josie’s character has developed somewhat. She isn’t
quite the emotional basket case as she was in Consigned to Death. This
is an improvement because it’s hard to imagine that she can be tough
enough to forge through with an investigation and be as weepy as she
was in the first book. The believability is a bit thin. However, she
seems to have gotten stronger in book two. She’s still emotional but
what female isn’t? I don’t feel that Deadly Appraisal was as fast a
read as Consigned to Death and I’m not sure why. I guess reader’s will
have to decide for themselves. I hope that if Ms. Cleland writes
another in the series that Josie will continue to show some growth as
she did in this one.
Intertwined throughout the book is information about antiques buying
and selling which will be of real interest to mystery readers that are
into antiques. A particular plus in this series is that each book
stands alone. The first does not have to be read to understand the
second and that is always good.