Robin Light Series by Barbara Block
Robin Light #3
In Plain Sight
Barbara Block
It's raining in Syracuse. Amateur sleuth Robin Light half-wishes her pet store, Noah's Ark, would just get up and float away—,business is that bad. A client finally comes calling—,only to wind up dead a few days later. . .floating in the local reservoir. If there's one thing Robin's sure of it's that Marsha Pennington didn't kill herself. Not when the dead woman's malicious husband was fighting for custody of Marsha's beloved twin Shih Tzus. Fueled by her diet of junk food and Scotch, and with some much-needed help from her ex-cop friend George Simpson, Robin searches for the link between the woman's murder, a runaway student, a bookie, and an incredible epidemic of bats. But for Robin, it's already too late. She has been marked for certain extinction by a vicious killer who waits. . .in plain sight.From Publishers WeeklyAlthough Syracuse pet store owner Robin Light (seen last in Twister) complains that business is off, she spends little time at Noah's Ark Pet Shop in this third in the series. A former neighbor, teacher Marsha Pennington, who has filed for divorce, asks Robin to investigate the suspicious tax returns of her husband, who is suing for custody of her two shih tzus, dogs he despises. Before the two women can meet again, Marsha's body is found floating in a reservoir outside town. Although the police rule the death a suicide, Robin, who has involved her friend George, a former cop, in the case, is convinced it is murder and resolves to find the killer. Meanwhile, a high school principal, one of the pet shop's regular customers, asks Robin to look for a missing student whom he wants to help before the girl gets into deeper trouble. At the same time, area residents are calling the store for help in removing bats from their homes while a shady exterminating company hawks attic sound systems meant to prevent the pests' return. As Block labors to unite her story lines, the action bounces unevenfully from problem to problem. Only Robin's unflappable common sense and practicality will keep readers turning pages. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalBlock's fictionalized Syracuse includes pet store owner Robin Light, whose concern for animals sometimes leads to sleuthing (Twister, Kensington, 1995). This time, former friend Marsha wants Robin's help in fending off her estranged husband, who wants custody of Marsha's beloved dogs. Before Robin can follow through, Marsha winds up dead (and the dogs stuffed). Another friend, meanwhile, would have Robin locate a missing illegal alien. Snappy prose and animal antics accompany a lively plot. For most collections.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Robin Light #4
The Scent of Murder
Barbara Block
Robin Light was behind the fish tanks of her Syracuse pet shop when the teenager walked in the door. With her electric blue hair, corpse-white lipstick, and in-your-face nose ring, Amy Richmond wasn't the type you could forget. But her appearance paled beside the message she had for Robin, "Murphy said you'd help me."Murphy was Robin's ex-husband who'd lived fast and died too young. And now, his 15-year-old daughter Amy was in trouble recently named the prime suspect in the sensational murder of her wealthy stepfather. Suddenly, the inveterate sleuth finds herself moving through the edgy, drug-infested world into which Amy has disappeared. Hitting up on her street connections, Robin plugs into a secret network of strippers, addicts, and runaways, where a low-life named Toon Town appears to be calling all the shots, and where Robin has to find a terrified young girl, before it's too late.From Library JournalA nervous teen-aged girl asks pet shop owner Robin Light (Chutes and Adders, LJ 7/94) to keep her albino ferret, then disappears. Robin finds out that the girl is wanted for murdering her step-dad. An appealing series.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistLast seen in In Plain Sight , Block's Robin Light seems unable to avoid murder, no matter how hard she tries to mind her own business, which happens to be a pet store in Syracuse called Noah's Ark. When a young girl comes into the store and demands that Robin board her pet ferret because Murphy said she would, Robin is speechless. Murphy, her husband who died of a drug overdose and left behind a mess that made Robin a chief murder suspect, has again risen from the dead. But before she can find out more, the girl drops her ferret and bolts out the back, just as two cops arrive in pursuit. Thus begins yet another intricately plotted mystery, this one involving the girl's murdered father and a connection to one more part of Murphy's life about which Robin knew nothing. Block's gripping denouements are especially good: they have previously starred a poisonous snake, a tarantula, and a bat. This one extends the streak, but this time we're not revealing the animal involved. Robin Light was recently named one of Booklist's Top Five Lesser-Known Female Sleuths . Soon she will have outgrown that category. Stuart Miller
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Robin Light #5
Vanishing Act
Barbara Block
Robin Light's client was in his prime: mid-twenties and all-American. But Bryan Hayes was no happy-go-lucky guy. For four months he had been looking for his sister, Melissa, a college sophomore who waved goodbye outside her dorm and disappeared without a trace. Everyone from the university's head of security to the dean and the police have their theories about what happened to her. And so does Bryan. He's blaming it on frat boy charmer, Tommy West, Melissa's ex-boyfriend.But Robin is developing a theory of her own. If Melissa met with foul play, why did she take her clothes, her purse, and her cash? If it was such a well-planned vanishing act why is Tommy so reluctant to talk? And why does Jill Evans, Melissa's best friend and fatal victim of a bizarre accident, keep figuring into the picture? It's all as baffling as Melissa's disappearance. Combing the campus for clues, Robin has suddenly found herself moving to the head of the class, and closer to the most challenging mystery of her career. Where it will lead she is afraid to guess, but the secret pasts of a surprising array of suspects are about to come to light, placing Robin in deadly jeopardy. . .and forcing her into a desperate gamble for the truth.From Publishers WeeklyRobin Light, pet-shop owner and amateur detective last seen in The Scent of Murder (1997), returns in a missing-persons case. College student Bryan Hayes hires Robin to look into the disappearance of his sister, Melissa, four months earlier. Robin takes to the local college campus at Syracuse to interview Melissa's former suitemates; her boyfriend, Tommy West; and psychology professor Fell, all of whom link Melissa's disappearance to the death a year earlier of her close friend Jill Evans. Complicating matters is the terminal illness of Bryan and Melissa's mother, who is determined that her daughter be found. Robin is also tolerating a rocky stage in her romantic relationship with ex-cop George, who has taken in his streetwise 14-year-old nephew. Although tightly written, stereotypes abound as the college students live on pizza, and George, who is black, has a run-in with a white cop over his nephew. As the tale progresses, Robin finds herself threatened by Tommy's wealthy father and uncovers some sordid information about Tommy and Bryan. The plot ends with a typical sleuth-meets-killer-and-solves-crime finale. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalSeries sleuth Robin Light (The Scent of Danger, LJ 8/97), who normally runs a pet shop, hunts for a missing college co-ed when police fail to find any leads. The co-ed's hyper brother and dying mother want results?which means danger for Robin. Instantly involving.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Robin Light #6
Endangered Species
Barbara Block
"Robin Light was recently named one of Booklist's Top Five Lesser-Known Female Sleuths. Soon she will have outgrown that category." --Booklist The Only Thing She'd Endangered. . .For Robin Light, running a pet store was a decent way to make a living--but solving the occasional crime was much more interesting. So when neighborhood tough kid Manuel and his cousin Eli wandered into her shop with a wild story about a suitcase full of smuggled Cuban cigars, Robin couldn't resist nosing around.Was Her LifeBut what she found wasn't exactly the harmless--if illegal--scam she expected. Someone was trading in something far rarer than exotic tobacco--something worth much more than easy cash, to somebody who was prepared to kill for it. And when Eli's roommate turned up dead, Robin discovered she might be next in line. . ."This female PI ranks right up there with the tough-guy detectives in taking her lumps and dishing them out as well." --Library Journal"Barbara Block's Robin Light mysteries are some of the best on the market today." --Midwest Book Review
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Robin Light #7
Blowing Smoke
Barbara Block
"An intricately plotted story with red herrings galore. The corking-good plot will keep you turning the pages until the very end. An outstanding addition to a wonderful series." --BooklistBlowing SmokeGetting involved with the rich and their problems is never a good idea, as far as amateur P.I. Robin Light is concerned. But when the mercury is rising to a steamy level, the bills are unpaid, and the investigation promises real money, the only answer is yes.Robin figures the case to be a no-brainer: the three adult children of an eccentric heiress, Rose Taylor, are convinced their mother is the victim of a scam operated by a psychic named Pat Humphrey, who has just earned a large place in Rose's will. Assuming the woman is a fraud, Robin pays her a visit and is startled to discover that Pat could be the real thing--and that she knows far more about the Taylor family than she admits. . .enough to get her killed.As the air grows thick with the promise of rain, the case takes one shocking turn after another, plunging Robin into the dark secrets and twisted loyalties of a troubled family, where money may not buy happiness, but it can be a powerful motive for murder. Now, Robin's own premonition about the rich is coming true, because a cold-blooded killer is about to turn the dog days of summer into the most dangerous season of Robin's life."Interlocking mysteries and layered family secrets nudge Block's seventh toward Ross MacDonald territory." --Kirkus Reviews"This female PI ranks right up there with the tough-guy detectives in taking her lumps and dishing them out as well." --Library JournalFrom Publishers WeeklyEstablished fans should welcome this seventh mystery (after 1999's Endangered Species) featuring Robin Light, the hard-drinking, sloppily dressed, heavy-smoking amateur sleuth and exotic pet-store owner from Syracuse, N.Y., but the uninitiated may find the plot tortuous and the plethora of characters too hard to keep track of. Robin faces a double challenge: locating a teenage runaway in nearby Cazenovia; and investigating an animal psychic, Pat Humphrey, whom three siblings suspect of defrauding their elderly heiress mother, Rose Taylor. Humphrey has won a place in Rose's heart (and will) by locating Rose's "kidnapped" cat; now Rose's much-younger husband and her lawyer hover over the old lady protectively. In the process of discovering that just about all the principals harbor secrets (one of Rose's children is a heroin addict, another a thief and transvestite), Robin is punched into unconsciousness, shot at several times with a rifle and held at knife-point. She also travels between New York and Wolfe Island, Ont., with no mention of Canadian or U.S. immigration or customs. On one page an automatic pistol turns into a revolver, while elsewhere a string of pearls, later described as knotted and hand-strung, breaks and cascades to the floor. Such careless slips won't bother most readers, but they do suggest why Block has yet to join the first rank of authors writing about contemporary female detectives. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.From Library JournalIn her seventh installment, exotic pet store owner and part-time sleuth Robin Light (Vanishing Act) meets a real challenge when the three children of an aging wealthy woman ask for help. They fear that their mother is being duped by a psychic and/or her much-younger husband, but then the psychic goes missing, and a body is found in the pool. A pleasing page-turner. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Robin Light #8
Rubbed Out
Barbara Block
Rubbed OutRobin Light has had better days. Business at her pet store is painfully slow. Syracuse has had twenty-three consecutive days of snow. And she's trying to quit smoking. . .again. So when ex-cop Paul Santini calls, offering a cakewalk of a job finding some rich lawyer's runaway wife, Robin takes the case--without getting all the facts. She gets her first clue that something isn't right during a visit to the worried husband, Walter Wilcox. His story--that his wife's therapist is to blame for her disappearance--doesn't ring true, either. It isn't long before Wilcox is singing a different tune, one that includes his eighteen-year-old mistress, expensive trinkets, and Janet Wilcox taking off with a good chunk of their money.Only it isn't really Wilcox's money. It belongs to his employers, a couple of Russian wiseguys who don't take kindly to being swindled--and before Robin can tell Walter that she's found his wife in New York City, she finds him tortured to death. It's too bad for Walter. . .and even worse for Robin. Apparently, lawyers talk a lot under extreme pressure. They even mention names, like that of a certain part-time P.I. Now, with the Russian mob convinced she knows where the money is, Robin is on the run, desperate to find Janet, recover the stolen goods, and keep everyone she knows from becoming landfill. . .From Publishers WeeklyWith enough plot for two mysteries, this eighth in Block's Robin Light series (after 2001's Blowing Smoke) involves torture, double-dealing and the Russian mafia. Robin, part-time PI, part-time pet-store owner in Syracuse, N.Y., receives a job offer from ex-cop Paul Santini-locate the runaway wife of a rich lawyer. A piece of cake. But when Robin finds that the husband, Walter Wilcox, has a rundown office with a stretch limo parked out front, she realizes something is definitely askew. Walter's story changes: it develops that he has a 19-year-old mistress; what's more, his wife, Janet, took off with a lot of money; and Walter's employers, members of the Russian mob, want the loot back. Before Robin can inform Walter she's tracked Janet to New York City, somebody tortures the lawyer to death. He talked before expiring, and now the Russians are after Robin. Despite all the action, readers are likely to think the story is over halfway through. There's more to come, however, and most of it is fast-paced enough to gloss over the rough spots until the usual climactic shootout. Robin Light is an engaging creation, and there are sufficient plot twists to satisfy the average mystery fan. Even if the novel blazes no new trails, it's an exciting read with an attractive and strangely plausible heroine. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalSeries sleuth (Blowing Smoke) and pet store owner Robin Light tackles Syracuse cold, a pernicious smoking habit, and the case of a lawyer's missing wife. The "missing wife" turns into much more: a lying lawyer who steals from murderously vindictive Russian employers. An exciting challenge for a tough heroine.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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