Jamie Quinn doesn’t look for mysteries, but they follow her wherever she goes. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, an elderly couple at a retirement home, want a divorce and Jamie is the lawyer they hire to mediate it. But when she arrives, the husband is dead and being wheeled out by paramedics.
Mr. Peterson is the first to die. When other members of the poker club begin to drop dead, Jamie once again finds herself in the midst of a mystery, something she never thought she would encounter at a retirement home.
Jamie’s relationship with Kip has taken a twist. Because he is gone so much traveling all over the world for his work, she is now having second thoughts about their upcoming marriage. I mean, the Peterson couple had been married for sixty years! If they wanted a divorce after that many years together, what hope was there for her and Kip?
A woman whose husband threatens to kill her with peanut butter also wants to hire Jamie. She can’t help but leave the room to laugh and realizes that she is no longer happy as a divorce lawyer.
An opportunity to use her lawyer skills at the retirement home where she was to mediate the divorce opens up for her, and she bites. It will only be a little extra money, but it is a chance to do something different. Little does she know that being at La Vida Boca will almost cost her a lot more than she will earn.
When a former client comes to see her while she is working, she takes an unplanned trip into the world of art, fakes, and forgeries. The Chagall painting left to him and his sister by their father has turned out to be fake even though it has a certificate of authenticity. Will Jamie survive until she finds out where the real painting is?
The narrator for Jeopardy in July is Fay Annette, and she does a fantastic job. Her voice is pleasant to listen to and drew me into the story. I listened to this audiobook while cleaning my kitchen, and to be honest, doing dishes is never something I look forward to. But knowing that I would be listening to more of Jeopardy in July while working in my kitchen encouraged me to do the spring cleaning in that room before spring arrived.
I was sent a free copy of the audiobook and the Kindle book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like to purchase an audiobook, Kindle, or paperback of this story, I’ve provided the Amazon links for you below.
Amazon Links:
Jeopardy in July – Audiobook
Jeopardy in July – Kindle
Jeopardy in July – Paperback
Favorite Sentences:
Although his bushy eyebrows looked like two white caterpillars taking a nap, his inquisitive eyes missed nothing.
What was my plan now? Adopt a hundred cats and become a crazy cat lady?
My fear was the Kip was Peter Pan and he would never grow up while I was Wendy, unimaginative and unadventurous—in a word, boring.
With the ringer turned off, my phone was like Schrodinger’s hypothetical cat, neither dead nor alive until someone bothered to check it.
New Words Learned:
actuarial – relating to actuaries or their work of compiling
and analyzing statistics to calculate insurance risks and premiums.
labradoodle – Also known as a labrapoodle, a labradoodle is a crossbreed dog created by crossing the Labrador Retriever and the Standard, Miniature, or Toy Poodle.
beautyberries – Callicarpa americana (American beautyberry) is an open-habit, native shrub of the Southern United States which is often grown as an ornamental in gardens and yards. American beautyberries produce large clusters of purple berries, which birds and deer eat, thus distributing the seeds.
sabal palm – Sabal palmetto, also known as cabbage-palm, palmetto, cabbage palmetto, blue palmetto, Carolina palmetto, common palmetto, swamp cabbage and sabal palm, is one of 15 species of palmetto palm.
Surinam cherry bushes – In spring and again in fall the Surinam cherry bears small, round fruits with eight prominent ribs. This is an easy-care greenhouse plant and because it’s tropical it stays evergreen year round. These are seed grown.
white baneberry – White baneberry, also called doll’s eyes, makes a beautiful addition to the native plant garden, with attractive foliage and long-lasting cluster of white fruits. The fruits are toxic to humans. The Blackfoot used a decoction of the roots as a remedy for colds and coughs. There is a red-fruited form (formerly called Actaea pachypoda forma rubrocarpa) that is generally rare but may be frequent in some locations.
https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/species/actaea/pachypoda/
About the Author:
Award-winning author Barbara Venkataraman is an attorney and mediator specializing in family law and debt collection.
She is the author of The Fight for Magicallus, a children’s fantasy, and a humorous short story entitled “If You’d Just Listened to Me in the First Place,” and two books of humorous essays: I’m Not Talking about You, Of Course and A Trip to the Hardware Store & Other Calamities in her Quirky Essays for Quirky People series.
She is also the author of the Jamie Quinn mystery series. The books in this series are Death by Didgeridoo, The Case of the Killer Divorce, Peril in the Park, Engaged in Danger. and Jeopardy in July.
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