Jolie Gentil Series

MEET ELAINE L. ORR

THE JOLIE GENTIL SERIES

Look for Jolie Gentil and friends in 2012 -- definitely on Kindle and perhaps with other publishers as well.

Appraisal for Murder is the first cozy mystery of a series. Jolie’s flexible schedule and willingness to dig into anything create fodder for good stories – each with a touch of humor and poignant friendships.

Appraisal for Murder

Jolie Gentil thinks moving into Aunt Madge’s beach town B&B will help her decompress after her husband gambled away their assets and got arrested for unauthorized “borrowing” from the bank he worked for. Wrong. She gets back into the appraisal business and connects with a couple friends, but within a week she finds Michael Riordan’s mother dead in her bed. This was not something covered in appraisal classes. Given some tough business issues and the fact that he is his mother’s primary heir, Michael is an immediate suspect.

Aunt Madge is convinced her good friend’s son did not kill his mother, and that gets Jolie wondering, too. The fact that Michael’s good looking and sure of himself is usually a plus, too. As she gets reoriented to Ocean Alley, where she spent 11^th grade, Jolie starts examining the facts. She has to dodge a loan shark who wants her to repay her husband’s gambling debts and a reporter she has rubbed the wrong way. Who would kill a sweet, generous woman? The list of suspects is muddled and the murderer’s motive is warped logic at its best.

Rekindling Motives

Jolie swore she wouldn't attend Ocean Alley High 10^th year reunion, but she has fun in spite of herself. There was no way she could know that when a fellow classmate asks her to appraise her late grandmother’s house that its attic has more than furniture gathering dust.

There are stories of long-dead bootleggers and someone who seems not to want anyone else to hear them. Could a decades old murder cause trouble today? It seems it can, and Jolie is there to stir the proverbial still.