Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Severn House Publishers (November 1, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0727869213 ISBN-13: 978-0727869210	Order from here:

Characters:

Anna Winthrop – Sanitation Worker and Amateur Detective.
Santos Reyes – NYPD Police Officer.
Nettie Clouchet – Blogger and wannabe journalist.
Eddie Pushkar – Nettie’s estranged boyfriend.
Patti – Anna’s Cousin

Synopsis:

Anna Winthrop sells a desk to a Ukrainian man. While he and his partner are loading the desk, Anna sees a note fall from the truck. The note say’s Help Me. Thus begins the latest in what Evan Marshall calls The Hidden Manhattan Mysteries. A subplot involves Anna’s downstairs neighbor Nettie, and her abusive ex boyfriend Eddie. Nettie is secretly writing a book involving Anna, and is trying to uncover everything she can about Anna. This brings the two of them together into this case. A smaller subplot involves Anna’s cousin Patti who is staying with her for a while, and mysteriously going into strange areas of Manhattan.

Review:

This is my first time reading one of Mr. Marshall’s mysteries. I read a book of his previously, The Marshall Plan for Writing® (See Review here). I was eager to review this when I was contacted, because I wanted the chance to see how his process played out in practice.

I liked the subplots. There were some areas where you have to suspend some reality, such as Anna flying all over the country on her salary. But if you can do that, it’s an enjoyable, but short mystery. People will die, dead bodies will show up, and it will keep you turning the pages.

Once I got into the storyline of this, I was up until 4:00 in the morning to finish it. There were a few loose ends, that I’m not sure if they were intentional or if the ball was dropped. But overall, I enjoyed the story, and think you would too. There was some strong language, and violent situations, as well as an adult theme, so I’d say only older teens and adults on this.

One nice aspect, was at the end Mr. Marshall explained certain hidden areas of Manhattan that the characters had visited (Thus the Hidden Manhattan title). I found that an interesting aspect to the story.

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to Anna at FSB Associates for a review copy of this book.  It in no way influenced my review.

You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Fiction, Mystery/Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.