Picture Me Dead

Rating:
Summary: Picture Me Disappointed
Review: Ashley Montague is on vacation with two friends when she witnesses the discovery of a body on a major highway. Haunted by the image of a dark figure watching from the side of the road, Ashley begins to investigate what happened, only to discover that the injured man is her childhood friend. While Ashley struggles to focus on her final weeks at the policy academy, she is distracted by her friend's fate, not knowing yet that his accident is related to the recent discovery of a woman's mutilated body. Investigating that woman's death has fallen to Jake Delissio, a seasoned homicide detective who is haunted by his female partner's apparent suicide. He's just moved his houseboat into a slip outside Nick's Place, a restaurant owned by Ashley's uncle, which is where hero and heroine initially meet and begin their tempestuous relationship.

Picture Me Dead, a romantic suspense novel by Heather Graham, makes heavy use of the author's Florida homeland, but lacks much of the sultry feel that comes with the Miami setting. Who is responsible for the woman's murder? Drug dealers or the cult that had been shut down years before following three other similiar murders? To complicate this matter, Ashley denies her attraction to Jake and struggles with her desire to draw and to serve the public good, then lands a surprising and generously paid position as a forensic artist. She gets the guy, too, but this is a romance and that's supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, this novel is seriously flawed from both its romance and its suspense angles. There is very little chemistry between the two leads and aside from a couple of sensual lines, this pair is seriously mismatched. Other problems include a convoluted mystery diluted with false leads and missteps. While it's generally good to mislead the reader to maintain suspense, there comes a point when too many possible paths will simply cause confusion. For example, around the midpoint of the book, one of Ashley's friends is in apparent danger, and Graham attempts to redirect suspicion to an obvious target. There's no real follow-up, and the narrative simply doesn't allow for logical questions or explanations.

This is the second Graham book in which the heroine had a name that reminded me of a soap opera stereotype that give romances a bad name, and she also has a bad habit of using a lot of secondary characters. This, I believe, is an attempt to round out the lead characters and their lives, but it only contributes to the overwhelming sense of standing in the back of a crowded room. I tolerated this during the initial chapters because I genuinely liked Ashley and her friends as they bantered while traveling, but when the story involved academy students, forensic specialists, detectives, relatives, and more friends, I lost interest in keeping up with everyone. Those characters I did enjoy disappeared, leaving others who were flat and unappealing.

By the time the mystery was revealed, after several poorly placed red herrings, I wanted to throw the book across the room... lucky for me, it had already fallen apart from all the other library reads. Perhaps they were unsatisfied with the story, too.

Rating:
Summary: A Strong Suspense Novel With Romantic Tones!!!!
Review: I am a huge fan of this very talented author and found her latest paperback to be highly engaging. This was really more in my opinion a mainstream suspense novel with romantic tones then an outright romantic suspense. What's the difference you ask? This was not a romance book with a suspense storyline as the vehicle for Ashley and Jake to fall in love with each other. Instead Ms. Graham concentrated on the murder/mystery/suspense of a five year old case that had been "solved". Problem is there has been a new murder that lookes to much like the ones from five years earlier. Is the wrong man in jail, or is he calling the shots from his prison cell?

The characters in this story are great. There are many secondary characters that make up the world that Ashley, and Jake both live in. I feel that they are really all part and parcel of the story. There are a few misleads and red herrings but in the end I was still surprised by just who the bad guy was. Again this was not a strong romantic story. The relationship between Ashley and Jake is not an in-depth one but I felt the chemistry that was between them from the get go. Don't expect "Classic Heather Graham" I think this is just a good example of how this author is growing and changing and perhaps reaching out to a larger readership. I for one am along for the ride to see where she takes us next.

Rating:
Summary: A Strong Suspense Novel With Romantic Tones!!!!
Review: I am a huge fan of this very talented author and found her latest paperback to be highly engaging. This was really more in my opinion a mainstream suspense novel with romantic tones then an outright romantic suspense. What's the difference you ask? This was not a romance book with a suspense storyline as the vehicle for Ashley and Jake to fall in love with each other. Instead Ms. Graham concentrated on the murder/mystery/suspense of a five year old case that had been "solved". Problem is there has been a new murder that lookes to much like the ones from five years earlier. Is the wrong man in jail, or is he calling the shots from his prison cell?

The characters in this story are great. There are many secondary characters that make up the world that Ashley, and Jake both live in. I feel that they are really all part and parcel of the story. There are a few misleads and red herrings but in the end I was still surprised by just who the bad guy was. Again this was not a strong romantic story. The relationship between Ashley and Jake is not an in-depth one but I felt the chemistry that was between them from the get go. Don't expect "Classic Heather Graham" I think this is just a good example of how this author is growing and changing and perhaps reaching out to a larger readership. I for one am along for the ride to see where she takes us next.

Rating:
Summary: Good Read!
Review: I like Nancy Drew, I have a whole set of her books. And if I wanted to read one I would!

On the way to a weekend with her friends Bess and George, er Karen and Jan, Nancy er Ashley (police academy student) sees a friend who's just been hit by a car. Turns out the friend is connected to the murder of a cop, who is connected to her partner Jake's search for her killer, which is connected to a cult. Jake is connected to Ashley since he's renting a boat slip from her uncle (also where she lives), her uncle is connected to the police as he also runs a cop bar at the same place. Ashley is further connected since she is whisked from the academy to the position of forensice artist to sketch the killer. See where I'm going? Nothing and nobody is this connected especially in a city the size of Miami!

With the bit of violence, sex and strong language this reads just like a Nancy Drew novel for the 21st century. And there were also a couple of definite Hardy Boy types involved!

If I had heard one more reference to "almost cops" I would have ripped out every hair on my head. And Ashley and Jake's involvement had about as much chemistry as a wet dishrag.

Lame. I would however recommend Ms. Graham's "Slow Burn".

Rating:
Summary: EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED!!!!!
Review: I waited for this to come out in paperback, couldn't so I bought the hard cover through my book club. MISTAKE! I love all her work, no matter which name she's writing under, but this one is more like a 10 year old decided to write a story. The plot sounds so good, that's the only thing that sounds good. The characters are flighty,dialogue is bad. It's almost like a B rated moive. I wish I had waited and bought it from the used book store. My opinion, don't spend you rmoney, borrow the book. I'm not keeping mine!

Rating:
Summary: strong police procedural romance
Review: In Miami, Florida, talented artist Ashley Montague attends the police academy while living with her uncle and his girl friend on top of a bar-restaurant he owns near a marina. Homicide Detective Jake Dilessio has just relocated his houseboat to that same marina. When the two first meet, neither likes the other.

Ashley draws the scene of a terrible accident she has seen. Later she learns the victim is a high school friend Stuart Frecias whose body is filled with illegal drugs as he resides in a coma. Ashley believes he would never do drugs insisting something sinister happened while Stuart was undercover working on a story for some rag.

Meanwhile Jake's worst nightmare returns when a woman is found mutilated in the Everglades with the same MO as that of a serial killer five years ago. As he makes no progress, he agrees to look into Stuart's situation. Wondering if Ashley's theory is correct, Jake sees a potential link between his homicide case and that of Stuart even while he and Ashley fall in love and she accepts a job as a forensic artist.

Fans of Heather Graham recognize that her novels always contain gripping suspense and the right portion of love. PICTURE ME DEAD is a strong police procedural romance that grips readers until the final twist. The engaging lead couple is typical of the genre as they initially detest each other, but ultimately love one another. The story line is filled with intrigue, but contains too many turns losing some credibility yet Ms. Graham is so good her audience will finish the novel in one sitting.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: not her best work, but decent
Review: It's obvious Heather Graham has a history in writing romance. "Picture Me Dead" pits jaded, cynical homicide investigator Jake Dilessio against the young, persistent rookie Ashley Montague, who reminds Jake of his former partner, who died during an investigation. Jake and Ashley are thrown together in trying to solve what begins as two separate mysteries but soon merges into one. The story moves fast, but the part I enjoyed best was the contradicting tension versus attracion between Ashley and Jake. Graham portrays this in a fun way, and I really enjoyed this book. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good for Graham
Review: Recently, I have been disappointed with Heather Graham's books. They read like a first draft, as if she didn't take the time to refine the story and inject a little collagen into the thin spots. A few years ago, I read "Slow Burn" and "For All Of Her Life", and I became hooked, but I read through pages and pages of her contemporary novels looking for something that even hinted at the caliber of writing she is capable of. "Picture Me Dead" was a ghost of that past.

I have long given up my hard-earned dollars to buy one of her books, but I still look her up in the library, as I did with "Picture Me Dead", in the hope that she will tantalize the way she once did.

She's always offered a muddled mystery in the midst of a decent romance. There are always too many players on the field, and every one is running around with suspicion haning over their heads, because she is trying too hard to create suspense and keep the reader from guessing the outcome of the story until the end. But instead, her technique creates confusion about her characters and their roles. I have trouble matching the name to the person, because there are too many characters.

"Picture Me Dead" still had these flaws, but it is still a good read. The story that unfolds surrounding hot Miami's dangerous underbelly of drugs and crime is far-fetched with the angle of a religious cult thrown into the mix, but the main characters of Ashley Montague, the young almost-cop, and Jake Dilessio, the obsessed veteran homicide detective more than make up for the scheme Graham tries to sell.

If Graham could dress up the rest of her characters in the ways she did with Ashley and Jake, she could come into her own. I loved the first initial "oops" meeting between Ashley and Jake, before Ashley realizes who Jake is, and the nervous tension Ashley experiences concerning Jake. I liked these characters, but as for the others, they lacked the vibrancy that Jake and Ashley possessed. Ashley and Jake are the sole reason I gave the book 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This is one of the BEST novels I have read in a long time. Heather Graham is one of my favorite authors. I loved this book.

Ashley Montague is a wonderful character. She wants to follow her father into police work. Although she is a talented artist, she has decided to pursue a career is law-enforcement.

When she and some friends take a short trip to the beach, they are delayed by an accident on the road. Later she learns the practically nude man who was hit by a car, is a former friend. The police decide that her friend is a druggie. Ashley, convinced he is not, decides to try to get someone on the force to dig deeper.

Ashley gets recognized for her ability to sketch faces. And she is offered the chance to move to forensics. Which she takes. This brings her into the murder investigation Jake is leading.

Detective Jake Dilessio has moved his houseboat to the pier where Ashley's uncle has his restaurant. Jake is still not over the death of his partner, five years ago.

When they first meet it is not love at first sight, or even like at first sight. But as they wind up caught up in the investigation of a murder, they find their investigations and emotions coming together.

This is a very well thought out plot. I was truly surprised at the twists and turns. The secondary characters and sub plots were entertaining. This is Heather Graham at her best.