The Pit and the Passion

Charity Snow is a reporter for a small newspaper near Sarasota. She's hot on a story when she's asked to help an eccentric author with his book on ghost sightings in the area. She instantly dislikes him, but as you might guess, that will change. They end up working together to solve the mystery of the body found at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an old abandoned hotel site.
This quirky mystery combines comedy, romance and intrigue in an interesting fashion. I could do without the explicit sex descriptions and think it would still be a very interesting book. I didn't recommend it to my mother for that reason. If I ignored that part, it was a fun read. The characters are interesting and the plot is detailed enough to keep the interest of the reader.

Interesting, creative plot and well-written dialog. Several twists you won't see coming, and plenty of tension; I read late into the night and just couldn't seem to shut the Kindle off and get some sleep. Recommended!

I’m not sure whether to call this a mystery or a romance because it’s both. There’s a decent cozy mystery going on throughout the book—actually several mysteries that the author deftly ties together by the end. And a rather hot romance—so beware. If you don’t like it graphic, there are a few areas where it’s a little intense.

And that’s my only real issue with this story. I was looking for a nice cozy mystery, not a hot romance. I wasn’t prepared for the bedroom scenes. Though the author did tone things down a bit in several areas, there was still a bit more in the sex department than I was prepared for.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I like a good hot romance as much as the next person. Heck, I used to be an editor for an erotic publisher so I’ve seen it all. And I don’t mind romance in a cozy mystery—it happens often that the sleuth eventually has a partner. What I didn’t like was being in the bedroom with them. Cozies don’t usually get this warm in the romance department. The relationships between the sleuth and the “love interest” evolve slowly—sometimes very slowly—over several books.

Still… the mystery was a good one with lots of red herrings and possible suspects. The sleuth—Charity—is a reporter for a local newspaper on a Florida Key. Her partner—Rancor—is a famous thriller writer. He comes across as a user—always begging money, using other people. He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities and I’m not sure why Charity ended up with him other than he was a good lover. But he is central to the story as his family is deeply ingrained in part of the mystery.

Charity and Rancor travel all over—from Florida to Paris to London and back to Florida in their pursuit of truth. The mystery itself is almost a hundred years old and deals with two skeletons found in an abandoned hole of an unfinished hotel. The author did her research and it shows—though she did diverge a little on a lot of the details in order to fit the mystery in. It was a little disconcerting as she’s working with famous names but not with all the truth. Okay, it’s a fiction book, but if you’re going to use famous names, you can’t change their known history (which the author did). It is still a good read, though.

So… recommendations? If you don’t mind hot romance with your cozy mysteries, go ahead and pick this up. Or maybe a satisfying cozy mystery with your hot romance? Either way, it was a quirky, fun read so pick your poison.