The Bali Mystery by Linda Weaver Clarke (2014), Narrated by Diane Lehman (2015)

Description

A COZY MYSTERY: Amelia Moore, the founder of the Moore Detective Agency, specializes in missing persons. Her cases have taken her to some interesting places and put her in some dangerous situations, but she always solves the case. With the help of Rick Bonito, her business is flourishing. When Mrs. Brody hires Amelia and Rick to find her missing brother, they find themselves in Bali, Indonesia. They are mystified why her brother quit his job, put his home up for sale, and ran off to this mysterious and exotic island without telling a soul.

Review

I loved the flirtatious friendship between Amelia and Rick. A lot of their interactions were humorous and adorable. The mystery involving a missing person which brings the pair to an exotic location provides the perfect backdrop for their burgeoning romance.

Rick and Amelia were great characters. Both are well written and well performed. I loved how Diane Lehman could so convincingly perform such a variety of characters from an elderly woman's voice to Rick's male voice and switching back to Amelia again.

I gave the story 4 stars instead of 5 because I thought they had quite an easy time with their actual detective work. William, the missing man, left a heap of breadcrumbs for the pair to follow which included a brochure circled with all the places he was going to visit in Bali and everything else they needed to know was written in a journal detailing why he had decided to disappear. Despite this I really enjoyed the suspense and mystery surrounding the people who were following and threatening Amelia.

I didn't really like the singing. I just found it a little annoying and unnecessary. It starts with Rick singing 'Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,' and continues with Amelia sporadically singing songs from the movie South Pacific, of which she is a big fan.

But these minute flaws were easily glossed over as the story simply pulled me in from the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I listened to it in one session. The narrator does a fantastic job and this is definitely a series that I will want to follow.



I received a copy in exchange for an honest review.