Roberts, Gillian. Caught Dead in Philadelphia. Charles Scribner Press,
Reason read: another chance to celebrate the Global Fusion Festival in Philadelphia.
Meet Amanda Pepper, a thirty year old school teacher who just broke up with yet another boyfriend…much to her mother’s chagrin. When Amanda is not trying to quit boyfriends or smoking she is stumbling into deadly crime scenes. Only Liza Nichols is no stranger to Amanda. She was a coworker of Amanda’s and engaged to wealthy, influential senator-hopeful, Hayden Cole. She was also found murdered on Ms. Pepper’s living room floor. And that’s how the trouble started.
When it comes to the antics of Amanda Pepper, you have to let reality go. There are things she does and says that I cannot imagine a sane person doing or saying. The misconception that she and Liza were very close, for example. Mrs. Nichols, Liza’s own mother, was convinced Liza and Amanda were the best of best friends. Future mother-in-law, Mrs. Cole, thought they had been friends since childhood and knew each other as intimately as sisters. Why doesn’t Amanda think that these misconceptions are super weird and why isn’t she telling the police about them? As an aside, my doctor assumed I took an antibiotic before surgery and when I didn’t correct her (because I hadn’t), it bugged me for days.
When a second murder victim is found, again with ties to Amanda, she is assigned police protection in the form of a hunky date-material detective. Her sister and mother salivate at the thought of them as a couple.
Confessional: when they solve the crimes I wish Pepper had put two and two together sooner. Her knowledge of Shakespeare’s Macbeth would have cracked the case wide open if she had just done her homework.
Line I liked, “That primitive center of me still believed that saying things made them possible, and silence kept them from happening” (p 123).
Author fact: let Google autofill Gillian’s name and your first result will be a UTF athlete with flaming red hair. A proper search reveals that Ms. Roberts was born in Philly.
Book trivia: Caught Dead in Philadelphia is the first Amanda Pepper mystery. There are many others, but I am only reading three. The Bluest Blood and How I Spent My Summer Vacation are up next.
Nancy said: Pearl said Roberts writes perfect books for cozy mystery fans. She’s not wrong.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Philadelphia” (p 180).
~*LunaSea*~ 