Sexy, sarcastic and stroppy as ever, Sam JOnes was not happy with the atmosphere at her local gym. As far as she was concerned there were altogether too many blondes in that gym and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a rusty chainsaw. But no one was expecting murder. Even for the more hardened souls amongst them it came as something as a shock when one of Sam's colleagues turns into a corpse.

Sam is asked to investigate and with her extremely unorthodox methods she discovers that more than one of the staff has an unpleasant secret to hide. Not to mention her own scandalous entanglement with a very unlikely source indeed...

 


This is the second Sam Jones novel, and to date the one elusive volume I've not been able to track down. Thankfully the publishers have had the very good sense to reissue these books, and after months on pre-order I have my copy in my hands. There are gaps in my acquaintance with Sam that this book will fill in, and I'm very much looking forward to having a good laugh, along with seeing her deal with all those blondes!

 


November 26th 2002
The End

This was one of the most surreal reading experiences of my life. I'll skip over the obligatory 'it's Lauren Henderson and by default awesome' part, because that's taken as read. Instead I'll explain why this was so weird. I've read this before...way before...before I knew about Sam, before I knew about Henderson, before I discovered how cool this pairing were. I had thought that this was the one Sam book I hadn't read, and as I was reading I realised that it was eerily familiar, and when the end finally came it clicked into place that I had borrowed this from the library years ago. Spooky, huh?

The story is very cool, a real old fashioned who dunnit, with a funky modern feel and language and cultural backdrop that I find particularly appealing. This installment doesn't fall over itself to be cool the way some of the Sam books does (Rubber Dress for example) and is all the better for that. The great thing about this story is the twist at the end, that it is so beautifully crafted that it's almost impossible to work out the end before you get to it (even when you've read it before...*blush*).

Fantastic book, and fun to know that I liked Sam Jones even before I knew I liked her...but damn, now I have to wait for new books in order to read more Sam!