Zen and the City of Angels

Rating:
Summary: Read this, nitpickers
Review: An impressive effort from Elizabeth Cosin. At times, the novel was slow-paced, nearly unbearably. The beginning was also quite boring, but once the action it started... well, as they say, when it rains, it pours. Despite being hard to get into, I did thoroughly enjoy this book. Plenty of the key ingredients desperately needed by any murder-mystery fan. Overall, quite a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Zenaria (Zen) Moses is Back and She's Better Than Ever
Review: Gritty Female private eye Zen Moses, who lost a lung to cancer but still smokes cigars, is in trouble after taking a seemingly simple job. Jim Gray, friend and attorney has asked her to find Noodles, a client's missing show dog, whose net worth is probably more than Zen's. But in staking out a house, she finds Gray is involved with Eddie Cooke, a crooked sports agent and a one-time murder suspect, who holds a grudge against her. Then she wakes up in the basement of a Santa Monica home with bloody hands, a baseball bat and a bludgeoned body with no face.

As she attempts to get herself out of the mess she becomes caught up with a friend of a friend whose life is on a downhill path. This leads to a televised OJ-type police chase and then being shot by a bitter cop. Now throw in a nasty electrical fault, a credit card fraud racket run by a very unpleasant Nigerian crime gang, an old murder, a long-buried secret, a spunky ten-year-old girl who needs saving, a corrupt cop for Zen to expose, another for her to flirt with and you have just the type of PI yarn that is both fun to read and impossible to put down.

Karen Holtz, New Jersey Book Girl

Rating:
Summary: Come on...
Review: Hard for me to suspend disbelief in the protagonist, and not just because she manages to be Wonder Woman without benefit of both lungs.

Zen is supposed to be musically hip-- the book opens up with her listening to Albert King and there are numerous other musical references throughout. But while expressing her disdain for Michael Bolton, she doesn't know the difference between Percy Sledge ("When a Man Loves a Woman") and Percy Faith ("Theme from a Summer Place"). Puh-leeze.

She is also apparently unaware that airplanes fly at 35,000 feet, not 35,000 miles. Maybe she books her flights on the space shuttle.

The buddy pairing is ripped off directly from Spenser and Hawk, as the editorial review admits. Zen's interior monologues sound more like Tracer Bullet's adventures in "Calvin & Hobbes" than anything else-- but Bill Watterson pulled off those noir cliches with better style.

Despite the sloppy research and derivative characters, this is an okay light read. But a five-star book it isn't.

Rating:
Summary: Read this, nitpickers
Review: Maybe the author could use a better editor, but still the MINOR nitpicks didn't take away from the enjoyment of the book. This isn't a police procedural. It's FICTION. It's not REALITY. So get a life, people. Ninety percent of the books in this genre don't have anything to do with reality. I thought Zen and the Art of Murder was much better than City of Angels, but I still enjoyed both books. Zen is a unique character and for those of you who want to compare this book to reality, Zen lives behind a pet cemetery. Clearly, the author wasn't going for real life settings. I guess most people didn't get this. Too bad. You're missing out.

Rating:
Summary: This time, it's personal!
Review: What a find. I love Zen Moses and Cozin's way with dialogue and atmosphere. I find the lung cancer part of her story and some of the plot twists to be unbelievable, but I'll definitely read more by this author.