No Gun Intended (Annabelle Starkey Mysteries, 2) - Hardcover

Zoe Burke is the author of two children’s books, but Jump the Gun is her first mystery novel. She is also vice president and publisher of Pomegranate Communications, an art book publishing company, and she enjoyed a brief singer/songwriter career as Katie Burke in the 1990s. She lives in Oregon with her husband. www.zoeburke.com

Very entertaining read. Annabelle, the main character, reminds me somewhat of Carlotta Carlyle, female pi, in another series, except Annabelle's antics are hilarious! Would read this author again.

I hadn't read the first one but that was not an impediment to enjoying this breezy and humorous mystery. I wish the publisher hadn't written the blurbs to compare Annabelle to Stephanie Plum - she's not Plum and she has her own quirks. This is fun!

This is the second Annabelle Starkey mystery. This series is mystery lovers delight. Annabelle is smart, independent and a good sleuth. She takes the reader along on a adventure you will enjoy from page one. I could not put it down. I look forward to more in this fun series that is witty, smart and a delight to read!

Not quite a cozy due to mother's foul mouth. Otherwise quite a fun and entertaining mystery.

This was a pretty funny book. In part because of the sports analogies that the main character uses. She knows nothing, I mean nothing, about sports, but she uses them anyway. "It's the ninth inning in the football game" is one that comes to mind. There are many funnier ones throughout this book....When her backpack is traded for a backpack with a murder weapon, the chase is on to find out who has her backpack and why the exchange. This is a madcap adventure with lots of laughs and lots of action....An entertaining read that for some reason, I was like meh, I'll read it even though I wasn't in the mood for it. It just seemed like it wasn't all that. Turns out, I was totally wrong. Once I got started, I was into it and laughing my way throughout.

I love this book. It has humor. It has slapstick. It's downright entertaining and I like how the author use scenes from movies to reflect the action being played on the pages in this fast-paced tome. The author did a great job in setting up this mystery with characters running in and out and not knowing who was or was not the villain. The sneaky plot twists that were thrown into the mix increased my enjoyment of this story, especially when all the pieces came together like one big giant puzzle was complete. Annabelle is one gutsy heroine and I liked how she handled herself when faced with dangerous situations. The secondary characters are lovable, especially her fun-loving parents who are a hoot. This was a fun read and I hope there are more exciting adventures with Annabelle, Mickey and her parents in this amusingly engaging series. This cozy with an edge pushes the boundaries of a traditional cozy because it contains some language that may be a bit colorful.

In her second outing (following Jump the Gun, 2013), Annabelle Starkey is looking forward to a relaxing visit with her parents in Portland, Oregon. That plan is foiled when she shows up with the wrong backpack - one that has a gun in it. In spite of the fact that she and her ex-cop boyfriend just opened their own NYC detective agency, Annabelle is not a fan of firearms. Fellow PI Luis and boyfriend Mickey fly in to join Annabelle, her professor father, and her foulmouthed physician mother as they look for the plane passenger who seems to be stalking Annabelle, as well as the person who assaulted the backpack's original owner. The unlikely entourage traipses through hospitals, hotels, and pool halls on their quest. Annabelle's constant movie references can come across as contrived rather than quirky, and the mystery's resolution requires a backstory that is never explained. That being said, Annabelle's family and friends are a funloving bunch, and at just over 200 pages, this caper is an enjoyable diversion.

Burke continues her genre-bending saga of a movie-crazed malaprop who yearns to be a private eye. Now that her boyfriend Mickey Paxton's at home in New York keeping an eye on Bonkers, her cat, Annabelle Starkey (Jump the Gun, 2013) feels safe visiting her parents, who just moved to Portland from Palo Alto. Safe, that is, until she discovers that someone on the plane took her backpack stuffed with personal items and left her holding a similar bag containing nothing but a puffy jacket and a Beretta Bobcat. A mysterious caller named Claudia sends Annabelle scurrying to the Japanese Garden in the hope of retrieving her belongings, but on her arrival she finds Claudia knocked out and her backpack nowhere in sight. Retreating to her parents' to soothe herself with a DVD of The Heat, she's promptly kidnapped, duct-taped, and thrown into a van. She escapes barely in time to have drinks and dinner with her parents' gay neighbors, Sal and Drew, who've just agreed to become the elder Starkeys' partners in Sunshine Bakery. Eventually, Mickey and Annabelle's best friend, tough-guy cop Luis Maldonado, arrives in Portland, but even he can't prevent Annabelle from getting riled up over Anne Elliot's abusive father in Persuasion. So Mickey himself, who can't resist pleas like "Kiss me again, like it's your last chance to kick the ball on second down," rushes to Annabelle's side to help her discover who took her undies, who cold-cocked Claudia, and who the hell owns the Beretta. What Annabelle would undoubtedly call a "hard-boiled cozy" is unlikely to appeal much to fans of either, unless they're really stuck on Portland.

After the rather traumatic events documented in Jump the Gun, Jeff and Sylvia Starkey decided to relocated and start anew in Portland, Oregon. Having recently moved to New York herself, their daughter Anabelle Starkey is on her first real visit to see her parents. Airplane flying is never enjoyable, and everything goes downhill quickly when Anabelle not only gets wine spilled on her by a dozing passenger, but her backpack then is swapped out with another's in Baggage Claim. And this backpack contains a gun....Always quick with a wisecrack and not the best at taking criticism, Anabelle and her love of movie references ensure for a fast, and always entertaining, read. The exploration of relationships between parents and their adult children elevates this novel above most humorous mysteries, rewarding readers with an enjoyable read that induces as many warm feelings as it does laughter.

The perfect combination of twisting plot, full characters, tight writing, smart sense of humor and just enough romance. Her parents are like some of ours, her friends as well. Real life with a murder here or there. Fun!