This week, Susie Black’s Saturday Author Spotlight shines on multi-genre author Joanne Guidoccio.
About the author:
A member of Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Joanne writes paranormal romances, cozy mysteries, and inspirational literature from her home base of Guelph, Ontario.
Susie has had the pleasure of reading several of Joanne’s books. Her favorite one is A Season for Killing Blondes.
Here is a blurb to whet your appetite:
Hours before the opening of her career counseling practice, Gilda Greco discovers the body of golden girl Carrie Ann Godfrey, neatly arranged in the dumpster outside Gilda’s office. Gilda’s life and budding career are stalled as Detective Carlo Fantin, her former high school crush, conducts the investigation. When three more dead blondes turn up, all brutally strangled and deposited near Gilda’s favorite haunts, she is pegged as a prime suspect for the murders. Frustrated by Carlo’s chilly detective persona and the mean girl antics of Carrie Ann’s meddling relatives, Gilda decides to launch her own investigation. She discovers a gaggle of suspects, among them a yoga instructor in need of anger management training, a lecherous photographer, and fourteen ex-boyfriends.
As the puzzle pieces fall into place, shocking revelations emerge, forcing Gilda to confront the envy and deceit she has long overlooked.
Here is Susie’s review:
Life for fifty-ish Gilda Greco is pretty darned good. After winning the lottery, the plucky Canadian ex-schoolteacher
moves back to her hometown to be closer to her family. She puts her money to good use by helping others and opens a career counseling practice. As the final touches on her grand opening party are completed, her cushy life takes an unexpected, dark turn when the body of a long-time acquaintance is discovered in a dumpster in the alley behind Gilda’s office. The Italian heritage of Canadian author Joanne Guidoccio is the zest that makes this humorous cozy mystery zing. Her attention to cultural and historical detail, the food, social mores, apparel, traditions, and housing of the Italian community, brings a high level of authenticity to this well-written tale. A story of family ties, jealousy, secrets, love, and loss, A Season for Killing Blondes lays bare ethnic traditions that either tie a community’s bonds closer or strangle it to death. The character-driven plot moves at a quick pace with snappy dialogue steering the mystery bus on its raucous, rollicking journey to discover whodunit. As the corpses pile up, a multi-generational cast of well-meaning but busybody relatives both complicate the protagonist’s attempts to solve the crimes and make the laugh-out-loud story all the more hilarious. The author deftly pokes fun at the foibles of her ethnic heritage without plunging it into caricature. A Season for Killing Blondes is a fun read with enough red herrings liberally sprinkled throughout the story to keep readers guessing which one of the zany characters did the deed right to the end. This timeless tale will appeal to readers who appreciate flawed characters who rise to the occasion, stand up for themselves, and fight for what they believe in when it counts the most. This engaging story has more than earned the five-star rating this reader has awarded it.
https://www.amazon.com/Season-Killing-Blondes-Joanne-Guidoccio-ebook/dp/B00XC