Pasta Imperfect : A Passport to Peril Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Writing 101
Review: Another tour, this time in Italy, and Emily finds herself knee deep in death.
There is a writing contest for up and coming writers or wannabees and some of the
contestants bite the dust so to speak. Her mind always clicking,
Emily seems to come up with a possible scenario on who would benifit by the death of each
of the victims. Naturally suspicion falls on surviving contestants. This is a clever,
funny, and surprising who-done-it mystery.

Rating:
Summary: A Laugh a Minute Mystery
Review: Emily Andrew has got to be the world's unluckiest travel agent. When she found a too good to be true deal to Italy, she lined up a group of fellow Iowans and away they went. Also along for the trip is a group of romance novel writers who, it turns out, are all willing to stab each other in the back for a chance in the spotlight.

First Emily's luggage gets lost and then the hotel the group is staying in burns to the ground. Things are definitely getting off to a bad start. Then when word gets out that the publisher sponsoring the trip has decided to have a writing contest with the winner getting a book contract, one by one the romance writers start mysteriously turning up dead. What happens next turns out to be a laugh out loud funny adventure as we try to figure out who the murderer is.

"Pasta Imperfect" is a fun and light mystery that will definitely leave you laughing, I know, because I still am.

Rating:
Summary: The tour business can be deadly
Review: Emily Andrew is at it again. She is helping escort a trip to Italy. She is with the senior citizens from Iowa. Even Emily's mother came along, much to her grandmothers chagrin. They have joined a group of highly competitive aspiring romance writers. There are some seasoned writers on the trip to impart their knowledge.

First Emily's luggage is lost. After the hotel fire, Hightower Books, the trip's sponsor, decides to hold a writing contest. When the aspiring writers start falling like flies wearing Emily's clothes, Emily begins to investigate what the connection is and who is killing everyone. Is it another aspiring author who doesn't want the competition? Is it someone else on the tour with a hidden agenda she hasn't discovered yet?

With the help of her ex-husband turned woman, she begins to get to the bottom of things. Her mother is one of the judges of the contest and she is worried for her safety as well. Her grandmother, a whiz on the Internet, does some research for her and assists Emily with the investigation.

Emily is also talking long distance to her Scotland boyfriend, Inspector Etienne, for assistance with this case. He was recently injured and unfortunately can't remember the important question he wanted to ask her. Between all the static and his memory loss, it makes for amusing conversations.

Can Emily figure out who the killer is before they strike again?

This is a terrific series. Emily and her tour group will keep you laughing, and out loud, too. I always enjoy this series. The fact that every book is set in a different wonderful destination is one reason. The other is that there are so many hilarious things that happen as well as plenty of bodies turn up on each tour. The characters in her stories are so well crafted and really add to the story. I especially enjoyed the aspiring writers and the published writers who were supposed to impart some of their wisdom. She really had down the relationships between everyone involved. It was so believable. I highly recommend this book.


Rating:
Summary: Death in Italy
Review: Emily Andrews is a tour guide who escorts groups of elderly Iowans abroad. In this, the thrid volume in the series, she is taking them to Italy. They are sharing their tour with a group of romance writers hoping to win a contest. There is a lot of jealousy and backbiting among the romance writers, then things start to go really wrong. First there is a fire in the hotel where the group is staying, then some of the romance writers start to turn up dead. The plot is extremly far-fetched, and the solution highly improbable, but there are some amusing characters, particularly Jack, Emily's ex-husband, wyho has had a sex change and is now Jackie. I was a bit startled to read the review on the back of this book which says that this series is as funny as anything by Janet Evanovich. This series is mildly amusing, but the books are nothing like as funny as those of janet Evanovich.

Rating:
Summary: Get rid of the sexual innuendos
Review: I have enjoyed Ms. Hunter's books but am getting very tired of all the sexual innuendos liberally scattered throughout her books. Most of the female characters are sex crazed or sex deprived. Give me a break here! If I want to read about sex, there are numerous other books to do so. Develop your plot more and please get rid of Jackie.

Rating:
Summary: Another Winner!!!!!!
Review: Maddy Hunter has won the triple crown with this latest and third adventure of what I hope will be a long series! Although the premise is consistent - Emily as a travel guide for a group of seniors - the story is fresh, entertaining and hysterically funny. Pasta Imperfect is all that Maddy Hunter's readers have come to enjoy and anticipate. The characters are so real that you're sure some of them must be the "crazy people down the street," and the heroine, Emily, is just like your best friend. Ms. Hunter added some major characters in this story that were not part of the senior travel group, and they were the perfect addition to the twists and turns of the story!

Be careful if you read this book on an airplane or in a doctor's waiting room - your hysterical laughter might get annoying!


Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, but not quite up to the last two
Review: Maddy Hunter's previous two novels in this series were absolutely delightful: frothy and silly without ever descending into dumb. They're great "take my mind out of gear" easy afternoon reads, like watching an old Kathryn Hepburn movie. (Okay, so it's implausible. So what?)

This novel continues where the last one left off (it starts barely a month later), but it's not quite as satisfying. The author got a little too caught up in the "zanyness" of her characters (and in my book, "zany" lives right next to "slam the book shut"), and forgot about telling a murder mystery.

Or... sort of. I did zoom through the book in a couple of evenings of bedtime reading. So I can't be complaining TOO much about the plot. It certainly held my interest.

In short: this is an enjoyable diversion. If you haven't read anything by this author before, however, you should definitely start with the first two in the series. If you've read them... you'll probably like this book, but shouldn't feel as though you MUST rush to buy it immediately.

(But can anyone figure out why Amazon has this listed under Italian cookbooks?!)

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as the first two
Review: This is the third book of the Passport to Peril series, and the 'mystery" aspect is barely focused on in the book. I have to agree with the other reviewer: the author needs to concentrate on the plot and not as much on the sexual innuendos and the antics of the crazy characters. The dead bodies that keep popping up are mostly ignored by the other people on the tour, and seem to be extraneous to the story! The book is great if you want to learn more about the sex lives of Nana and Emily, but I wish there had been more of a mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Fun read
Review: Tour guide Emily Andrews is escorting a group of Iowa senior citizens on a visit to Italy. In this third installment of Maddy Hunter's "Passport to Peril" series, Emily's group of quirky Iowans has been booked for the tour along with a group of wannabe romance writers. Emily seems to be a magnet for misadventures while on vacation. This story opens with the group's hotel burning to the ground. After relocating the tourists to another hotel, one of the aspiring roman writers is found dead, apparently having fallen down a flight of stairs int he hotel hallway. When a second member of the romance writers' group accidentally falls to her death while sightseeing in a church, Emily begins to wonder if these deaths are really accidents, or if there is a murdered amidst the group.

Most of the humor in this book is in the form of poking fun at romance novels. Two of the romance writers on the tour are fierce rivals, and some of the dialogue between these two is wickedly funny. There are also some amusing characterizations of "ugly American" tourists abroad. However, most of the characters in this story just weren't well-enough developed for me to really care about them. Emily's ex-husband Jack (now known as "Jackie", after undergoing a sex-change operation) is also along on the tour. I found Jackie to be a really annoying character.

Hopefully, future stories in this series will feature more plot and development of the secondary characters.