Body Movers
Stephanie Bond
(Reviewer - Dr. Alma H. Bond)
2006 MIA Books
ISBN: 0778323334

And you thought you had a dead end job...

Carlotta Wren’s life didn't turn out as she had planned. She didn't plan for her parents to skip bail for a white-collar crime, leaving her to raise her younger brother. She didn't plan on having the silver spoon ripped out of her mouth & foregoing college to work as a saleswoman in Neiman Marcus. She didn't plan on her blue blood fiance dumping her like last year's designer bag. & she didn't plan to be single with no prospects ten years later, still working at Neiman Marcus, with no idea of where her fugitive parents are.

When her brother is arrested, her parents' case is reopened, & he becomes a body mover who transports corpses from crime scenes, her former fiance's wife is murdered, & her brother's sexy boss draws her into the bizarre world of body moving, Carlotta realizes that she has to bag the murderer to keep from being next on the list.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma H. Bond writes:

Body Movers: And you thought you had a dead end job... by Stephanie Bond (no relation), is the launch book to a new, sexy mystery series. It's also a romance, the genre which constitutes fully one-half of the fiction paperback market in the U.S. That's one out of every two fiction paperbacks sold!

When several Atlanta socialites are found murdered, police are unable to find the perpetrator. There are many interesting suspects, including a computer hacker, a cheating spouse, embezzlers, the man Carlotta had loved & lost, & even the Neiman Marcus salesclerk herself, who soon realizes she has to find the murderer herself or risk being his next victim.

Body Movers is full of suspense & holds the attention of the reader most of the time. Stephanie Bond's sense of humor is hilarious. (The funniest line of all is the great quote on the cover, “This is the best book I've ever read.” - Stephanie's mom.) The characters of her friend Hannah & a few of the men are well drawn, & the handling of the deceased, which was well researched, is interesting & informative. The quote on the back cover from American Online Romance Fiction Forum says, “For a really good time, read Stephanie Bond.” Hmmmmmm. In addition, Bond is fabulous at promoting herself & her books. Every writer should read her website (www.stephaniebond.com) to learn how to sell books, if not to write them.

There are many good things one can say about Body Movers. It is interesting, humorous, well-paced, & keeps the reader in suspense. Why then do I think it's not a good book? Well, for one thing, it's poorly structured. There are many twists in the plot that are cliche & unbelievable. The victim of the murder, who is an extremely important figure in the novel in a number of ways, is a superficial, stereotyped portrait of a society woman. A few of the characters are simply sketched in, like the neighboring snoop, Mrs. Winningham, who enters & leaves the scene all through the book without giving us a whit of understanding about her need to snoop. The resolution of the crimes (which would not be fair to reveal) is a disappointment in several ways, while the ending itself is nothing short of outrageous. I slammed the book shut feeling cheated & furious, with the impression that Ms. Bond had purposely not satisfied the curiosity of her readers in order to have some place to go in her sequel.

So it's obvious that this book is not my cup of tea. For people who like a light, funny romance mystery which requires no thinking, the time engaged in reading Body Movers might be considered well spent. They probably will find it entertaining, sometimes even engrossing, & a shade more educational than watching a soap opera. The book received many good quotes from reviewers as prestigious as Publishers Weekly. I just don't understand why. Or, for that matter, if publishers can't find better written novels in the genre. Maybe it's because one out of every two fiction paperbacks sold is a romance mystery, & publishers are hard put to find enough good writing to meet the demand!

More from Stephanie Bond:
In Deep Voodoo
Whole Lotta Trouble
My Favorite Mistake & many more.
(07/02/06)

Dr. Alma H. Bond
2006©Alma H. Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of 11 published books. Her latest, Camille Claudel: A Novel, hot off the presses!
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2005);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.