Flowers for Her Grave

June 27, 2011
In Clemens's action-filled third Grim Reaper mystery (after 2010's The Grim Reaper's Dance), Casey Maldonado tries to start fresh by moving to Florida, changing her name to Daisy Gray and beginning a career as a fitness instructor in a gated community. With Death as her unrelenting companion, however, Casey can't find peace for long. When someone attacks Andrea Parker, a woman in Casey's aerobics class, with an iron hand weight in a changing room with fatal results, Casey must decide whether to stay and help solve the crime or pack up and leave before there's any more trouble. The book offers plenty of suspense as well as humor, but the unusual premise is often more tiresome than it is clever. With Death insistently commenting on Casey's every move, its presence, at times, weighs not only on Casey but also on the reader.

April 15, 2011

Would you want Death as your sidekick, even if you were on the run?

Since losing her husband and child in a fiery car crash, Casey Maldonado has been hunted by the Pegasus car company and forced to kill a thug in self-defense (Embrace the Grim Reaper, 2008, etc). Now she's settled down, at least temporarily, as Daisy Gray, the new fitness instructor at The Flamingo, an upscale living complex in Raceda, Fla. The only person, or thing, or aura, who knows her real story is Death, who hovers at her side sarcastically kibitzing. Before her first day of employment is over, Andrea, a resident, lies dying in the gym shower room; Andrea's best friend Krystal has started a petition asking for the ouster of Daisy, whom she accuses of murder; and gossip smears the two previous fitness instructors, Richie and Brandon, pronouncing one cute but incompetent and the other sexy but inclined to prey on lonely singles. Egged on by Death, Daisy goes into full sleuth mode, chatting up the complex's manager and her assistant, the water-aerobics instructor, the barman, anyone who signs up for her fitness classes and a powerfully built Amazon who turns the tables on her by introducing her to her sensei, Asuhara, who gently elicits Daisy's real identity as Casey. All the while, Death flits in and out, leaving icy drafts to mark his presence, and a cop who reminds Daisy of her dead husband activates her hormones. The climactic scene finds Death returning from somewhere else in time to join Casey for another departure.

Death is annoying, and Clemens steamrolls her plot to an abrupt conclusion in the last few pages, but Casey is bearable in small doses.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

Casey is reinventing herself again in this third paranormal entry (after The Grim Reaper's Dance). This time she tries a new life in Florida. Death, of course, follows. [For another tale featuring a sleuth/Grim Reaper, see Darynda Jones's Second Grave on the Left reviewed on p. 96.--Ed.]

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
There are numerous unconventional sidekicks in mystery fiction but none quite so peculiar as the second banana who tags along with Casey Maldonado in Judy Clemens Grim Reaper series. Yes, Caseys cohort is Death, who joins her on the road as she searches for a new life in the wake of the tragic death of her husband and baby son in a car crash. Here she attempts to reinvent herself as a fitness instructor in an upscale Florida condo community, but naturally, a body turns up in the locker room (that sort of thing happens a lot when you run around with Death). The police cant find any suspects, but Casey, feeling responsible, investigates and uncovers some unsavory details about the victims life. Residents of the complex, staff, and Caseys predecessors in her job could all be involved. Perhaps surprisingly, the outlandish premise somehow works, and most readers will find themselves thoroughly entertained by this oddly appealing mix of the jaunty and the macabre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)