Good Thriller/Suspense

I chose to listen to this book after receiving a free copy. I had read A Death in Vegas 5 years ago and I liked it, so I was happy to listen to it. All opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased.

I have always liked mystery/suspense novels but I enjoyed this one even more than usual. Christoper Meeks’s writing tells a good story and he gets right to the point. You have to listen to every word or you’ll miss something important.

The main character, Patton Burch, is a regular nice guy with a big heart in a stagnant marriage. When he’s accused of murder by the police and cheating by his wife. He’s an innocent man so he sets out to find out the truth. Suddenly, this bug man has to become a super sleuth. He made me a nervous wreck!

At first, I didn’t care for Patton’s wife but that was just because she reacts to the fact that she thought he cheated on her. Will she ever believe he didn’t cheat on her?

The narrator did a good job with timing and enunciation. The only issue was a small one with the audio and it was technical.

A Death in Vegas is a fast read full of mystery and suspense. It has a few twists which is always fun. I highly recommend it.

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Christopher Meeks hit a home run again!

I was so excited to hear that Christopher Meeks mad an audio book from his book, 'A Death In Vegas! I leaped at the chance to review it. I already read the book and loved it so I wanted to experience it in a different form.
Meeks is a prolific writer across genres of short stories, literary fiction, and more recently, crime mysteries. 'A Death In Vegas' is his second crime mystery. Is it as good as the first, ‘Blood Drama’?
It is no secret that I have not been a big fan of mystery books however, with ‘Blood Drama’, Christopher Meeks won me over. With his writing, I discovered that mysteries can also be literary and with his brand of quirky characters and pop culture throughout all of his books, there is much to love!
In ‘A Death In Vegas’ the president of Ben Bugs, Patton Burch is in Las Vegas at a convention promoting beneficial bugs for organic gardening. He has a young woman there dressed up as a lady bug. Her name is Chatterley and is a model hired by Patton’s wife Tess. How does Chatterley end up in Patton’s hotel room, butt naked and dead? Who killed her? Patton certainly didn’t.
With Christopher Meeks trademark tongue in cheek humor and quirky characters we find out the answers by following the on the run antics of Patton.
The book grabs the reader from the first page! Just to say I enjoyed ‘A Death In Vegas’ is an understatement, I loved it! I can’t recommend this book enough. ‘A Death In Vegas’ would make an excellent gift to any mystery lover, male or female! How did the audio book compare to the book? With the excellent narration, the audio book brings the book to life! Christopher Meeks hit a home run again!

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Fast read, unusual protagonist

This book was a fast, interesting read about a protagonist that was a little unusual to me.

It wasn't that he was a middle-aged, straight, white guy that was strange, but what he did for a living - a sustainable, eco-friendly seller of bugs as an alternative to pesticides.

I really liked that aspect of the book, because it was something I had never considered could be a career, and it lent a lot of knowledge to the character that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

The mystery itself was a pretty good one, though it wasn't a super shocking ending; maybe I'm too familiar with mysteries at this point.

A few things about this book bothered me. Typically Anglo-Saxon characters seemed to never be described as white, though there were descriptions of their hair, eyes, etc. But every POC in the book was described as such. This is typical of the "white-assumption" that many books have had for a lot of history, and I'm guilty of it myself; maybe having my attention drawn to it recently made it more noticeable.

I liked that the protagonist was a go-getter. He didn't give up, even when things were at their bleakest. I admired that about him. He wasn't a totally likeable character, but he wasn't one I actively disliked, either. He was well fleshed out.

The narrator of the audiobook was pretty good. His voice was clear and he enunciated well. However, there were times that it was obvious the narrator had stopped the recording and started up later, and sometimes the volume difference was jarring.

Everything said, I don't regret reading this book. It was a solid story and I'll probably pick up other titles from the author in the future.

I received an advanced reader copy for my honest review.

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2 people found this helpful

A great mystery to check out that you will love

Patton Burch is the owner of BenBugs, a company that provides bugs for organic gardeners to use instead of chemicals. He is at a lawn and garden show in Las Vegas. With the insistence of his wife, he has hired a young, beautiful girl, Chatterly, to be a sexy ladybug at his booth. After the first day and a strange series of circumstances he runs into Chatterly after the show and has dinner with her. This leads to her spending the night in his hotel room, innocently, and him finding her dead the next morning.

Everyone quickly thinks he was sleeping with Chatterly and the police think that means he killed her. Things go from bad to worse when his wife disappears to a breath of fresh air and the new investors are using BenBugs to launder money, which the FBI quickly think Patton is involved with. Patton knows that everyone thinks he did the laundering and the murder so he decides to step up and find out the truth to why Chatterly changed her name and why she was afraid. Besides, what could go wrong?

At first I admit that I kind of felt bad for Patton, he seemed like such a bumbling fool and I was impressed by how far that he had gotten. But he has a good heart and does want to help Chatterly even if he has secretly other desires. When he starts looking into Chatterly and the rest of the mystery he stumbled around like a drunkard. It’s hard to image that he was going to really solve the case or get himself into more trouble.

Over all I really enjoyed this book. Bill Perry does a wonderful job drawing you into the story and keeping you on the edge of your seat. If you like thrillers I recommend check out this book. I was a great read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to listen to and share this book.

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Great mystery!

A young model is killed under such mysterious circumstances that even the only witness isn't sure what happened. Is this a grisly murder scene or an accidental death?--

Patton Burch is a forty-two year-old business man who is attending a Vegas garden show. Chatterley is a young, beautiful culinary student who models in her off-time and, at the beginning of the novel, is currently modeling for Burch's BenBugs booth dressed as a sexy ladybug.
After the business man and the model hit it off as friends on the first day of the show, she innocently spends the night in his hotel room. The next morning she is dead. Patton must prove that nothing sexual happened between the two of them and that the woman's death was the result of something else entirely.
Christopher Meeks is a talented author and one that certainly kept me guessing all the way through this mystery. I love the intriguing twists and turns of the main plot and the interesting and fleshed-out characters. I really felt for Patton and I wanted him to figure out exactly what happened in that hotel room. I also really, really liked Chatterley. I appreciate when a mystery writer can make you feel for the victim as, I'm sure for those of us who read a lot of mysteries, sometimes the victims can be underrepresented or tend to blend together. That definitely did not happen here.
As for the audio book, I thought it was gorgeously done. I am so picky about audio books that I almost never find narrators that I like, but this one had a strong, compelling voice that kept my attention. And he never mis-pronounced any words, a thing that will actually make me put an audio book down from time-to-time. (Told you I was picky.)
I can't recommend the audio of this highly enough. Listening to it really adds to the experience of reading the book.

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Best way to start off a story: dead body

You can’t go wrong by starting off with a dead body! Right from the start, the story had my attention. Patton Burch of BenBugs wasn’t expecting to find his coworker Chatterley dead on the floor of his hotel room. Of course, it does look suspicious but Chatterley did have asthma, so the police aren’t too excited at first. But then Patton makes things worse by bumbling into an investigation of his own, curious about what Chatterley had in her car, and since he happens to have her keys… well, why not look, right?

At this point in the story, I thought maybe we were wandering into a comedic murder mystery because Patton really is just bumbling his way through this plot. He doesn’t have a clear idea of what he’s looking for or where to go, and he refuses to listen to the advice of anyone (friend, lawyer, mom, wife, police, etc.). However, this story stayed on this this side of serious and it wasn’t intended as a humorous piece.

Everyone suspects Patton of sleeping with Chatterley since she was found naked and dead in his hotel room. Patton and us readers know right from the start that he didn’t sleep with her but we also know that he wasn’t exactly against the idea if it were to come up, if she initiated it, etc. So I didn’t have much sympathy for Patton when he defended his chastity and no one believed him.

The ladies were mostly sex objects or romantic interests. His wife Tess is supposedly this awesome business woman but we pretty much only see her during sexy times or lover’s quarrels. Chatterley was a sexy model and a flirt before she died. That’s carried on for other ladies like Chatterley’s friend, a winery assistant, the young flirtatious ladies in bikinis, etc. Him mom isn’t sexy or a romantic interest but her relationship with her now-deceased husband and his own infidelities comes up a few times. Basically, the ladies are under utilized in this story.

There were several times in this plot where info miraculously appears for Patton to follow a lead and you can do that once or twice but it happened so often that I no longer had confidence in Patton’s detective skills. The plot was having to do all the heavy lifting by constantly dropping bread crumbs.

The mob tie in was a surprise and it did give the ending some drama, which I liked. While Patton and Tess do reconcile, I felt like they hadn’t really worked anything out. So I expect more choppy waters for them in the future when they’ve calmed down from having their lives in jeopardy. The book could probably use another edit. There were little things like is Patton driving a van or a truck? Sometimes it switched within the scene, even from sentence to sentence. So little things like that could use some polishing. All around, it was OK. 3/5 stars.

The Narration: Bill Perry has a good voice for Patton. He does a good job of capturing Patton’s near-constant surprise and confusion as well as his absolute need to stay on the case and out of jail. While Perry didn’t have a wide range of character voices, he did have a few and that worked for most of the book as several characters never interact with each other. Sometimes his female characters sounded feminine and sometimes they didn’t The recording quality isn’t all the great. There are several bits where the volume changes. You can tell that several sentences throughout the story were re-recorded. Also there’s a few sections where the recording has a cavernous sound to it. All together, 3/5 stars.

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