The Homicide Hustle by Ella Barrick

The Homicide Hustle by Ella Barrick ISBN-13: 9780451239747 Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Obsidian Mystery Released: April 2, 2013

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
The traveling TV dance show, Ballroom with the B-Listers, is coming to Washington, D.C., and ballroom dancer Stacy Graysin is first in line to participate. Not only will the publicity propel Graysin Motion, Stacy’s dance studio, into the limelight, but the prize money could help offset her looming debt. Plus, Stacy’s teen idol, heartthrob Zane Savage, specifically requested to be her partner.

But the whirlwind reality contest stumbles when the show’s coproducer, Tessa King, is found dead in the Potomac River. All the clues point to Tessa being murdered--and the suspects are the contestants and crew of B-Listers. Now Zane and the rest of the B-Listers must promenade back to fame, and Stacy will need to hustle to maintain her reputation, win the competition, and catch a killer.


My Review:
The Homicide Hustle is a cozy mystery. It's the third book in the series, but you don't need to read the previous books in order to understand this one.

The mystery was a clue-based puzzle and whodunit was guessable, but not quickly guessable. The details about the filming for the reality ballroom show were interesting and funny. The characters were varied and interesting. I liked the realistic, complex motives behind the various characters' actions--even for those with smaller parts.

Yet I didn't really like Tessa, though I didn't strongly dislike her, either. She sometimes put others in danger in her quest to solve the mystery, and she generally dismissed her illegal or thoughtless actions as acceptable because she was trying to solve the mystery. While I usually understood her motives for her actions, I didn't understand why she didn't trust a perfectly capable detective to make even obvious deductions about who to question. I saw no reason (in this book at least) as to why she couldn't trust him.

There were no sex scenes. There was a fair amount of explicit bad language.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.