Win Murder In Disguise (A Preston Barclay Mystery Book 3) Engineered By Donn E. Taylor Represented In Digital Copy

loved this book! It really surprised me with the characters' unique humor got to love puns! and ongoing orchestra music in Press's head.
I had to look up some of the songs mentioned and hear what he was hearing at different points in the book.
I loved the frequent talk about music and history and literature, I liked Press a lot and Mara was great, I love strong women characters and the men who love them! There's often talk of faith as Press teaches the history of Christianity and is a Christian himself, so he gets a lot of resistance from liberal teachers and students.
I thought he answered them very well, calm and reasonable and witty, It was interesting to see how college has changed since I went a little over a decade ago and yet some things were the same.
It's scary to think how much influence professors have over young people and how so many of them have an agenda and not a good one.
That's why it's so important for a person to know what they believe and why before they go to college.
He gave them something to think about, There's some romance as Press and Mara's relationship progresses and some action as he gets closer to the truth.
It moved at a fast pace, This was a wonderful story and I'm definitely going to look for more books by the author, I highly recommend it!
I received this book from Litfuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review, I haven't read the otherbooks in this series so I wasn't really prepared for the fact that the main character Press loves music and constantly has orchestra music playing in his mind and relating music to situations.
I found it very odd and unrelatable even though I love music, I'm not sure if the otherbooks are like that, I also found Press and Mara's relationship very odd and strained as well, I couldn't help but think they need professional counseling to continue as a couple,

Overall the story line was good since it had some mystery and drama which I liked, There were also some unexpected twists and turns, I probably wouldn't read this book or series again thoughit just wasn't my style,

I received a copy of this book complimentary for blog and social media review, All opinions are my own, On the positive side this is distinctively Christian fiction, and I appreciate his mention of worshipful church services with hymns.
The plot is fine. But several things make this book less than appealing to me, He uses clumsy puns throughout the book, At least four times he uses unbelievable cute names for people, such as Miss Chevious, The main character has internal music in his head that he can't control, and the author continually points to this and gives the names of the songs which are usually classical songs.
I didn't recognize any of the titles, so this just slowed the pace for me, Though I don't think the author intended it, the tone of this book seemed to be condescending to characters who held different political and theological views than the main character.
It would have helped if these 'villains' had some redeeming qualities, Also, much of the mystery was solved by a villain who simply explained everything, And the last chapter was merely an info dump for everything that hadn't been explained in the book, When news of Preston Barclay's beloved friend committed suicide, Preston is unable to believe the news, However, when the evidence points to an open and close suicide case, he decides to let sleeping dogs lie.
The victim's wife, Grace, doesn't believe it is a suicide and pleads with Preston to investigate her husband's death.
Preston begins to question the suicide, when details are emerging that don't quite add up including the anonymous threats.
Will Preston be able to figure out the truth behind his friend's death

This was the third novel in the Preston Barclay series, but each book looks like it can be read as a standalone.
The book was an easy read but a few pages in, the number of musical references was a bit overwhelming to the point of annoyance.
I found my eyes glazing over paragraphs with the music reference and found myself too lazy to search what each song was.
I also found the dynamic between Mara and Preston to be boring, petty, and unauthentic, Mara is jealous when Preston talking to another female, but she purposely needles him about other men without Preston is saying or doing much.
I felt like Mara and Preston made a poor investigator and they seem to be more like, "Let's kick the hornet's nest and see what happens".
The author keeps mentioning Preston's Special Ops training, but not once I made it seem like he actually puts any of that to use.
If anything, when I think of Preston Barclay, I think of a frumpy grandpa with his pants mid chest along with a pair of oversized glasses.
Preston Barclay is a bumbling, yet exciting protagonist who will keep you turning page after page as he tries not to solve his friend's murder.
 When he becomes the target of strange attacks and even stranger conversations with other professors, Preston stumbles upon clue after clue and begins to put the mystery together.

 
Preston is not your typical main character,   He's a little more advanced in age, for one thing, and is quite quirky,   Having lost his musician wife a few years before, he hears music as a soundtrack to his life,   He seems to be quite addicted to ham sandwiches and coffee,   Press is also loyal and smart,   He's observant and dedicated to his friends, as well as being a strong person of faith,   He's a neat main character, and I enjoyed reading about him,  

It was unusual, too, the way that Preston was clearly not  trying to solve a mystery, and yet developments kept coming.
  This, along with some of Preston's idiosyncrasies, makes the story especially entertaining,   The mood of Murder in Disguise is not as scary as other mysterysuspense stories that I've read, but I really liked the bits of humor scattered throughout.
  I'll definitely read more of Donn Taylor,

I received a free copy of Murder in Disguise from LitFuse Publicity,   All opinions are my own, Official verdict: Suicide.

But why would that vigorous department chairman kill himself To avoid disgrace Those rumored ventures on the dark side Some other secret life Visiting professor Preston Barclay wonders.
But his questions bring no answers, only anonymous threats, He has enough problems already, proving himself on a strange campus while radical faculty do all they can to undermine him.
Worse yet, that sexy siren assigned as his assistant complicates his courtship of the beautiful Mara Thorn,

While Press keeps asking questions, Mara's research reveals a cancer of criminal activity that permeates the community and even the campus itself.
The more Press questions, the more dangerous the threats against him become, and the more determined he grows to clear his friend's name.


But can Press and Mara's stumbling efforts prevail against the entrenched forces of the police, the campus radicals, and an unseen but powerful criminal organization that increasingly puts their lives in danger


General Content G: Contains little or no sexual dialogue or situations, violence, or strong language.
As part of the Litfuse Bloggers Program, I was able to join in on the Blog Tour for Murder in Disguise by Donn Taylor.
  This is the first novel Ive read by Donn Taylor, and I have to admit that it took me a little bit to dig into the book due to a slow start on my part and too many things on my plate.
Once I got into the book though, it was a "cover to cover" read,  sitelink
Preston Barclay is returning back to college hoping he will find out why his good friend, Jordan Collier, has died.
Even though the police considered it a closed case of suicide, Preston felt that his friend's character and moral beliefs just didn't support a suicide.
 Preston was a visiting professor for a few weeks during the summer at the state University,   When Grace, Jordan's widow, asked Preston to look into it, he felt that he had to look into it.
  The end result is that every time something happened, it led Preston and Mara to think that there was something more to this than Jordan's suicide.


As a side note, I really liked this about Preston: He is a man with music constantly playing in his head.
Depending on the people he's with or the situation he was in, the music would change, Apparently his widow was a musician and he would continue to hear her playing music,   As a musician myself, I thought it was very endearing, sitelink

There are many twists and turns to this story that make readers uncertain about who anyone really is whether they are a friend or an enemy.
 I enjoyed this book and recommend it to other mystery lovers, It has talk of Christianity and it fits very well within the story,


sitelink Learn more and purchase a copy,


With a PhD in English literature Renaissance, Donn Taylor taught literature foryears at two liberal arts colleges.
Now retired, he has published suspense novels, mysteries, and poetry, His historical novel Lightning on a Quiet Night was a finalist for theSelah Awards, He is a frequent speaker at writers' conferences,
 
In a prior incarnation, he led an Infantry rifle platoon in the Korean War, served with Army aviation in Vietnam, and worked with air reconnaissance in Europe and Asia.
He now lives in the woods near Houston, TX, where he writes fiction, poetry, and essays on current topics.

 
Find out more about Donn at sitelink donntaylor. com.
 







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I received a copy of this book without cost from the publisher through the litfuse bloggers program.
I was not required to write a positive review, The opinions I have expressed are my own,

sitelinkThis review was originally posted onand Beyond I, . . didnt like this book at all, I read aboutof it, but I just couldnt finish, Some parts of it felt a little bit like hearing the author ranting about certain topics, and it was too much.
I received the book so that I could review it as a part of a blog tour, but as I said, I didn't like it.
So I'm posting a short review here dreadfully late and will not be posting it anywhere else,

One thing I especially didn't like was the scene about the professor telling his classroom of students that he was supposed to give them "trigger warnings" about things but he wasn't going to because he believed that anyone who got offended at things were just too sensitive so they might as well drop his class.
While I understand that the term "trigger warning" has a certain negative connotation because people have misused it, that doesn't negate the real use for it.
The term is supposed to be used to warn students that there is a sensitive topic to be addressed in class not a controversial topic, but a topic like rape which might "trigger" horrific memories of a person who had been raped, causing them to have a panic attack.
That is not to be taken lightly, And the fact that the professor in the story treats it this way demonstrates to me that the writer has no idea what he is talking about and shouldn't have written it into the story, even if he is frustrated about his own teaching as a professor in real life.


That scenario is one example of the many things that irritated me about this book and made me stop reading it.
And the thought that the author might read this and think me the same as one of his "not strong enough to handle trigger warnings" students makes me angry.


I received a complementary copy of this book, all opinions are my own, and I am not obligated to give a positive review.
First off, the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the book, This is a pet peeve of mine,

Now that's off my chest, when I picked up this book I knew nothing about the author, or that this is technically part of a series but in the way Peter Whimsey books are a series, helpful if you read them in order, but not necessary, I simply knew Lamplighter published it and that they have a good reputation.


I do love a good mystery and this delivers without excessive gory details and without bad language, and without sex scenes.
The frequency of these things in many books makes me nervous to try new books at times, but I'm so glad I picked this one up because not only does it lack those things it also is solid mystery I hate when I can figure things out before the reveal! This one I truly didn't know how it was going to wrap up.
The book also highlights real issues that are affecting college campuses across America, Getting books like this out there is one of the best ways to open up dialogue so we can create positive change.


I'll definitely be looking into other Preston Barclay books, Maybe with those under my belt this book would get that additional star, .