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From Here to Paternity (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 6)
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Manufacturer: Avon
Author: Jill Churchill
Publisher: Avon
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $6.99
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Avon
Author: Jill Churchill
Publisher: Avon
Average Customer Rating:
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From Here to Paternity (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 6) Description
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780380777150
ISBN: 0380777150
Label: Avon
Manufacturer: Avon
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 1995-07-01
Publisher: Avon
Product Release Date: 1995-07-01
Studio: Avon
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780380777150
ISBN: 0380777150
Label: Avon
Manufacturer: Avon
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 1995-07-01
Publisher: Avon
Product Release Date: 1995-07-01
Studio: Avon
Editorial Review of From Here to Paternity (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 6)
Jane Jeffry, suburban sleuth extraordinare, and her friend, Detective Mel VanDyne, have braved a blizzard to join her friend Shelley at a Colorado ski resort. In spite of having all their kids along, Jane and Shelley imagine a few mindless days of relaxation. But their hopes are dashed on their first attempt to ski when Jane careens into a snowman that hides a very real -- and every dead -- body.
The slopes are littered with suspects -- a convention of genealogists led by a political fruitcake who thinks she's going to put her hand-picked Tsar on the Russian throne, a mysterious crimson-clad skier who's always on the horizon, and ex-stockbroker who's hiding from his investors, and an irate tribe of Native Americans. Jane has to take a census of the suspects and make some grave assumptions about who was vacationing with malicious intent.
Customer Reviews of From Here to Paternity (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 6)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nothing special, nothing awful
Review: Definitely a fluffy, cozy mystery, this one has nothing to recommend it, though it also has nothing that screams "don't waste your time!" It was a typical "housewife finds body, solves crime" book with decent characters and plot. The snowman was a nice, humorous touch and I don't really mind the characters, though the relationship between the heroine and her boyfriend is a little tiring. You just want them to get on with it or call it quits, really. Overall, a good book for an afternoon of mindless reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Quite Enjoyable
Review: Jane Jeffry, her three children, and boyfriend Mel Van Dyne have traveled to Colorado with Jane's friend Shelley Nowack and her family. Shelley's husband Paul is interested in investing in a ski resort and Jane and Shelly have been invited to check out the place. The ski resort is gorgeous and Jane is enjoying her brief escape from her everyday life of cooking, cleaning, and car pools. But their relaxing stay is interrupted when one of the guests at the resort is found dead. The local sheriff doesn't find the death suspicious even though Mel does. But the sheriff can't deny it is murder when Jane skis into a snowman that is hiding a dead body. There are plenty of suspects at the resort including genealogists and a tribe of Indians who had a very real reason to want the murder victim dead. But the Sheriff seems to be focusing on Jane as the killer and she works to clear her name before her vacation in Colorado turns out to be a permanent visit.
"From Here to Paternity" is another good cozy mystery by Jill Churchill. It gets off to a somewhat awkward start as Jane explains to Mel the reason why they are in Colorado - necessary for Churchill to set the stage for readers - but awkward since certainly they would have discussed it long before they arrived in Colorado. But the book quickly picks up after that and is quite enjoyable. I loved the ski resort setting and if it really existed I'd be packing my bags and hopping on a plane for a visit. The ski resort is also a good setting for diverse characters such as dentist Ronald Lucke (better known as "Lucky"); Hawk Hunter, an Indian who claims the ski resort is on Indian property; cleaning woman Linda Moosefoot; and the annoying Doris Schmidtheiser. The book has several subplots including one involving the Tsar of Russia and one involving who should own the ski resort, that all tie together at the end of the book. The mystery is well written and well plotted and it's a nice touch having Mel bang heads with the local Sheriff. There's a gentle sense of humor throughout the book that makes it very enjoyable (including Jane and Shelley trying to figure out what is the real name of the sheriff).
"From Here to Paternity" is a quite enjoyable cozy mystery.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Chicago Suburbs Rise To the Colorado Rockies. Creme Goes Sour (and makes tangy, multi-cultural soup).
Review: Mel's bad mood used for mild humor was a good reader (tow) "in" for me, especially when he admitted to wanting to keep his funk. Jane's contrast to Mel, from her chipper mode, was a pleasant change for "who's got the slump." Jane rambled along easily with her off-duty detective's gripes, as they maneuvered a snow-packed, Colorado mountain road en route to a resort of which Shelley's husband was considering purchase, with a group of investors.
The pair of murders in this icy plot were intriguingly entangled. The first downed body was set in a somewhat classic "stop the cameras" scene; the second provided a more unique "snow job" presentation. I'm not comfortable seeming to be so easy going about people killing people (Jane, as usual, uncovered both deaths). But, cozy mysteries are meant to be light, to relieve the digging efforts, with perfect shovels provided for poking around in the criminal mind, with the hope of unearthing enough "crime-stopper" clues to show How To detoxify motivations, and How To flat-line compulsions to carry on-and-on-and-through-to-the-bitter-end with revenge, greed, seething anger, and/or love un-attained. Have I missed anything?
Oh. Yeah:
-- "The RUSSIANS are COMING!" (To dinner? With a historic succession of Tsars?)
-- "INDIANS are beating Tom Tom's!" (WHO's in the modern-day stew! What burial grounds agenda?)
Regarding exposing the criminal mind, here is a quote from Jane:
>> "... If a murderer were really that clever, he'd have thought of a better way to solve his problem than to kill Mr. (xxx) -- and maybe Mrs. (xxx), too." <<
Additional brief passages of that type of insight referencing criminal craniums have been genetically peppered (can't forget my genes) into this # 6 (See my Listmania and other reviews) in Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series.
As a Colorado native I was, of course, successfully baited by Jane's basing some of her Sherlock processes from an evaluation of what she described as a Colorado rugged-character-attitude (see the book for details), and her feelings of being seen as an outsider.
As I might describe Jane's thought process about that (this is not a quote from the novel; it's my paraphrase, and a bad one):
"What's this? I, an outsider? Moi?? How can this be? Here I am, just friendly-little-ole, saunter-around-comedienne, me (who also happens to be a great Mom, a world-syndicated, dancing-or-stumbling-comedically-around-kids, laid-back, but-perfected-by-flaw-acknowledgment, type of Mom). What can I say? I'm good. You'd better believe it! Or, I'll make you a bad guy in one of my books!"
(Jill Churchill, a.k.a. Janice Brooks, isn't the only author of mysteries in this series; Jane Jeffry is too, and in this one Jane provides her theory on the whereabouts and whereas's of THE IMAGINATION.)
The above paraphrase exposes part of what I enjoy about Jane, who she is, her approach to a life she loves, as a spunky suburban housewife.
Dealing with being an outsider, working around privacy issues, is handled tastefully and tellingly in this plot. I particularly liked the scene in which Jane and Shelley interrogated Tenny, the resort owner's niece, about a recent murder of a family member. At first the sleuthing pair felt awkward manipulating a personal conversation, especially at such an emotionally sensitive time, to obtain private information which felt to them to be none of their business.
You be the judge, of how Jane turns a "busy body" squeamishness into a win-for-all instead of a "free-for-all."
The high chill of the Colorado Rockies may be a climatic antithesis to the heavy heat of Australian Outback, but from some angles, those cultures could be seen as kindred geographic gestalts, at least in being playgrounds in which rugged individualism can flourish, if not in providing sanctuary for privacy issues. Crocodile Dundee would have approved of Jane and Shelley's style of nosiness into emotionally vulnerability areas, and he's one of my favorite characters from any culture-clash-comedy.
Yeah, I know, the culture clash in FROM HERE TO PATERNITY was not about Australia; it was about Chicago suburbs Vs. Colorado Rockies. But, I don't see many common denominators between those two geographic mecca's. Well, there is one, a viral aversion to anything phony. People in both places seem to grow titanium craniums for personality integrity:
"I am what I am."
Only difference is that Jane, as a "military brat," (as she describes herself) has honed a few effective social graces and sees her genuineness as appealing across cultural lines. Colorado mountain people (the rugged individualist, hermit types) rarely wonder how anyone perceives them. They just are. And they often want to be left alone in peace. Try prodding a bear in hibernation.
I was surprised to notice, when I had gotten well into the novel, that I was enjoying the change of environment (of course being a Rocky-Mountain-foothills native might have helped) from the suburban neighborhood with Jane and Shelley's next-door visits, each in their separate domains, though connecting nearly constantly. At the resort the sleuthing pair were sharing close, well-appointed quarters, along with Mel and all their kids (with Paul in the distant background as usual, but "there" ... somewhere ... rather than out-of-town).
Maybe I should add an aside here to clarify that, as has been the case throughout this Jill Churchill series, the adults carry the show, while the kids remain in the background adding a bit of fun warmth periodically. This is in contrast to Diane Mott Davidson's Goldilocks series, in which the teen-angst Vs a Mom being compelled to cater-to-everybody, has often been the prime plot, especially in the earlier books in that (culinary) crime novel series. This is not to criticize either focus of adults/kids in these two mystery series. Both styles have their unique values, issues-to-pursue, and reader appeals.
The skiing lessons and clues for studying family histories were a bonus in this one, and were successfully succinct. I believe I could use them to get going on either a search of my genetic trees, or a slip down the slopes. If I were so inclined. However, being dined in one eye and bereft in the other, I believe I'll pass the skis to the bunnies.
Linda Shelnutt
NOTE TO SHOPPERS (that loveable breed of folk glorified by Jane & Shelley in this mystery series):
-- Speaking of mountain grown, etc., Amazon now sells groceries, even the gourmet stuff including Quinoa (keenwah), an amazingly nutritious (and nutty delicious) grain which was originally grown only by the Inca Indians in high mountains of exotic countries outside the USA.
-- That Super-grain is currently being grown at White Mountain Farms in the San Juan range of the Colorado Rockies. I'm hoping the White Mountain Farms quinoa will be for sale here at some point.
-- The current vendors of Quinoa on Amazon are also impressive, and sell at very competitive prices. I'm ready to try the vender here which (unlike White Mountain farms) offers pre-washed Quinoa, so I don't have to rinse off the saponin coating (a natural insecticide which has developed around this grain over its eons of evolution).
-- Now (while I remain a semi-hermit on a mesa surrounded by the Colorado Rockies) I can buy QUINOA, SAFFRON Strands, JASMINE TEA, KONA COFFEE BEANS (learned about those through Cleo Coyle's coffeehouse series of mysteries, see my Listmania and reviews), LAVENDER ESSENTIAL OIL (learned about EO's through Dr. BJ Ferrell who recommends Young Living EO's, see my Listmania and reviews) ...
-- All in one cart through my laptop PC!!!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: This is a great series.
Review: I have read all the books in this series and I find them wonderfully amusing. It's a quick, light-hearted read that puts a smile on your face and not a scare in your pants. I love this series and can't wait for more, more, more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Churchill again amuses with useful clues and painful puns.
Review: Jane Jeffrey applies her well-honed motherwit in this cheerful tale of multiple murder. While juggling her roles as parent, sweetheart, best friend and out-of-control bunny-skier, Jane finds time to discover two corpses, become a suspect, and expose several crimes, and their criminals while learning useful information about genealogical research.
Review Summary: Nothing special, nothing awful
Review: Definitely a fluffy, cozy mystery, this one has nothing to recommend it, though it also has nothing that screams "don't waste your time!" It was a typical "housewife finds body, solves crime" book with decent characters and plot. The snowman was a nice, humorous touch and I don't really mind the characters, though the relationship between the heroine and her boyfriend is a little tiring. You just want them to get on with it or call it quits, really. Overall, a good book for an afternoon of mindless reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Quite Enjoyable
Review: Jane Jeffry, her three children, and boyfriend Mel Van Dyne have traveled to Colorado with Jane's friend Shelley Nowack and her family. Shelley's husband Paul is interested in investing in a ski resort and Jane and Shelly have been invited to check out the place. The ski resort is gorgeous and Jane is enjoying her brief escape from her everyday life of cooking, cleaning, and car pools. But their relaxing stay is interrupted when one of the guests at the resort is found dead. The local sheriff doesn't find the death suspicious even though Mel does. But the sheriff can't deny it is murder when Jane skis into a snowman that is hiding a dead body. There are plenty of suspects at the resort including genealogists and a tribe of Indians who had a very real reason to want the murder victim dead. But the Sheriff seems to be focusing on Jane as the killer and she works to clear her name before her vacation in Colorado turns out to be a permanent visit.
"From Here to Paternity" is another good cozy mystery by Jill Churchill. It gets off to a somewhat awkward start as Jane explains to Mel the reason why they are in Colorado - necessary for Churchill to set the stage for readers - but awkward since certainly they would have discussed it long before they arrived in Colorado. But the book quickly picks up after that and is quite enjoyable. I loved the ski resort setting and if it really existed I'd be packing my bags and hopping on a plane for a visit. The ski resort is also a good setting for diverse characters such as dentist Ronald Lucke (better known as "Lucky"); Hawk Hunter, an Indian who claims the ski resort is on Indian property; cleaning woman Linda Moosefoot; and the annoying Doris Schmidtheiser. The book has several subplots including one involving the Tsar of Russia and one involving who should own the ski resort, that all tie together at the end of the book. The mystery is well written and well plotted and it's a nice touch having Mel bang heads with the local Sheriff. There's a gentle sense of humor throughout the book that makes it very enjoyable (including Jane and Shelley trying to figure out what is the real name of the sheriff).
"From Here to Paternity" is a quite enjoyable cozy mystery.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Chicago Suburbs Rise To the Colorado Rockies. Creme Goes Sour (and makes tangy, multi-cultural soup).
Review: Mel's bad mood used for mild humor was a good reader (tow) "in" for me, especially when he admitted to wanting to keep his funk. Jane's contrast to Mel, from her chipper mode, was a pleasant change for "who's got the slump." Jane rambled along easily with her off-duty detective's gripes, as they maneuvered a snow-packed, Colorado mountain road en route to a resort of which Shelley's husband was considering purchase, with a group of investors.
The pair of murders in this icy plot were intriguingly entangled. The first downed body was set in a somewhat classic "stop the cameras" scene; the second provided a more unique "snow job" presentation. I'm not comfortable seeming to be so easy going about people killing people (Jane, as usual, uncovered both deaths). But, cozy mysteries are meant to be light, to relieve the digging efforts, with perfect shovels provided for poking around in the criminal mind, with the hope of unearthing enough "crime-stopper" clues to show How To detoxify motivations, and How To flat-line compulsions to carry on-and-on-and-through-to-the-bitter-end with revenge, greed, seething anger, and/or love un-attained. Have I missed anything?
Oh. Yeah:
-- "The RUSSIANS are COMING!" (To dinner? With a historic succession of Tsars?)
-- "INDIANS are beating Tom Tom's!" (WHO's in the modern-day stew! What burial grounds agenda?)
Regarding exposing the criminal mind, here is a quote from Jane:
>> "... If a murderer were really that clever, he'd have thought of a better way to solve his problem than to kill Mr. (xxx) -- and maybe Mrs. (xxx), too." <<
Additional brief passages of that type of insight referencing criminal craniums have been genetically peppered (can't forget my genes) into this # 6 (See my Listmania and other reviews) in Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series.
As a Colorado native I was, of course, successfully baited by Jane's basing some of her Sherlock processes from an evaluation of what she described as a Colorado rugged-character-attitude (see the book for details), and her feelings of being seen as an outsider.
As I might describe Jane's thought process about that (this is not a quote from the novel; it's my paraphrase, and a bad one):
"What's this? I, an outsider? Moi?? How can this be? Here I am, just friendly-little-ole, saunter-around-comedienne, me (who also happens to be a great Mom, a world-syndicated, dancing-or-stumbling-comedically-around-kids, laid-back, but-perfected-by-flaw-acknowledgment, type of Mom). What can I say? I'm good. You'd better believe it! Or, I'll make you a bad guy in one of my books!"
(Jill Churchill, a.k.a. Janice Brooks, isn't the only author of mysteries in this series; Jane Jeffry is too, and in this one Jane provides her theory on the whereabouts and whereas's of THE IMAGINATION.)
The above paraphrase exposes part of what I enjoy about Jane, who she is, her approach to a life she loves, as a spunky suburban housewife.
Dealing with being an outsider, working around privacy issues, is handled tastefully and tellingly in this plot. I particularly liked the scene in which Jane and Shelley interrogated Tenny, the resort owner's niece, about a recent murder of a family member. At first the sleuthing pair felt awkward manipulating a personal conversation, especially at such an emotionally sensitive time, to obtain private information which felt to them to be none of their business.
You be the judge, of how Jane turns a "busy body" squeamishness into a win-for-all instead of a "free-for-all."
The high chill of the Colorado Rockies may be a climatic antithesis to the heavy heat of Australian Outback, but from some angles, those cultures could be seen as kindred geographic gestalts, at least in being playgrounds in which rugged individualism can flourish, if not in providing sanctuary for privacy issues. Crocodile Dundee would have approved of Jane and Shelley's style of nosiness into emotionally vulnerability areas, and he's one of my favorite characters from any culture-clash-comedy.
Yeah, I know, the culture clash in FROM HERE TO PATERNITY was not about Australia; it was about Chicago suburbs Vs. Colorado Rockies. But, I don't see many common denominators between those two geographic mecca's. Well, there is one, a viral aversion to anything phony. People in both places seem to grow titanium craniums for personality integrity:
"I am what I am."
Only difference is that Jane, as a "military brat," (as she describes herself) has honed a few effective social graces and sees her genuineness as appealing across cultural lines. Colorado mountain people (the rugged individualist, hermit types) rarely wonder how anyone perceives them. They just are. And they often want to be left alone in peace. Try prodding a bear in hibernation.
I was surprised to notice, when I had gotten well into the novel, that I was enjoying the change of environment (of course being a Rocky-Mountain-foothills native might have helped) from the suburban neighborhood with Jane and Shelley's next-door visits, each in their separate domains, though connecting nearly constantly. At the resort the sleuthing pair were sharing close, well-appointed quarters, along with Mel and all their kids (with Paul in the distant background as usual, but "there" ... somewhere ... rather than out-of-town).
Maybe I should add an aside here to clarify that, as has been the case throughout this Jill Churchill series, the adults carry the show, while the kids remain in the background adding a bit of fun warmth periodically. This is in contrast to Diane Mott Davidson's Goldilocks series, in which the teen-angst Vs a Mom being compelled to cater-to-everybody, has often been the prime plot, especially in the earlier books in that (culinary) crime novel series. This is not to criticize either focus of adults/kids in these two mystery series. Both styles have their unique values, issues-to-pursue, and reader appeals.
The skiing lessons and clues for studying family histories were a bonus in this one, and were successfully succinct. I believe I could use them to get going on either a search of my genetic trees, or a slip down the slopes. If I were so inclined. However, being dined in one eye and bereft in the other, I believe I'll pass the skis to the bunnies.
Linda Shelnutt
NOTE TO SHOPPERS (that loveable breed of folk glorified by Jane & Shelley in this mystery series):
-- Speaking of mountain grown, etc., Amazon now sells groceries, even the gourmet stuff including Quinoa (keenwah), an amazingly nutritious (and nutty delicious) grain which was originally grown only by the Inca Indians in high mountains of exotic countries outside the USA.
-- That Super-grain is currently being grown at White Mountain Farms in the San Juan range of the Colorado Rockies. I'm hoping the White Mountain Farms quinoa will be for sale here at some point.
-- The current vendors of Quinoa on Amazon are also impressive, and sell at very competitive prices. I'm ready to try the vender here which (unlike White Mountain farms) offers pre-washed Quinoa, so I don't have to rinse off the saponin coating (a natural insecticide which has developed around this grain over its eons of evolution).
-- Now (while I remain a semi-hermit on a mesa surrounded by the Colorado Rockies) I can buy QUINOA, SAFFRON Strands, JASMINE TEA, KONA COFFEE BEANS (learned about those through Cleo Coyle's coffeehouse series of mysteries, see my Listmania and reviews), LAVENDER ESSENTIAL OIL (learned about EO's through Dr. BJ Ferrell who recommends Young Living EO's, see my Listmania and reviews) ...
-- All in one cart through my laptop PC!!!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: This is a great series.
Review: I have read all the books in this series and I find them wonderfully amusing. It's a quick, light-hearted read that puts a smile on your face and not a scare in your pants. I love this series and can't wait for more, more, more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Churchill again amuses with useful clues and painful puns.
Review: Jane Jeffrey applies her well-honed motherwit in this cheerful tale of multiple murder. While juggling her roles as parent, sweetheart, best friend and out-of-control bunny-skier, Jane finds time to discover two corpses, become a suspect, and expose several crimes, and their criminals while learning useful information about genealogical research.