During the summer vacation, Molly Martin has a business opportunity to return to her former home in Boulder, Colorado. All she has to do is agree to teach a seminar on writing greeting cards at a rustic mountain resort. With her spouse Jim away on business, Molly, owner of Friendly FAX, accepts. Her best friend Lauren agrees to watch her two kids as well as her own child.

When they arrive in nearby Evansville, they are stunned by the fact that their rooms are filthy dumps that look unfit for human usage. Molly hosts a greeting cards seminar attended by five angry women, who agree with her assessment. During the first exercise, one of the attendees anonymously slips a threatening note into the bowl that is used to collect creative thoughts by the women. The next morning, Molly's friend Allison is dead and the police believes Molly is the prime suspect. She begins to dig into the background of the participants by questioning each of them and other related individuals.

THE FAX OF LIFE is an entertaining, quite amusing cozy. Like the previous novel, The Cold Hard Fax, this amateur sleuth mystery centers on the humorous Molly. Readers will enjoy the interesting mystery, but what makes this novel and series special is the master humorist ability of Leslie O'Kane, who instills her mysteries with endearing characters.

Harriet Klausner

I do not recall reading this kind of puffed up "LITERATURE" since the last time I accidently stumbled on a 19th century young adult novel.

The editor of this great waste of my time should be fired.

Don't bother. There are much better novels out there.

Allie's third adventure in crime GIVE THE DOG A BONE may well be her most intriguing and complex outing to date. Off to a rather rocky start, her consulting business is finally solidly in the black; her somewhat up-and-downish relationship with her dogaphobic office-mate Russell seems to be working itself out nicely, and her datebook of problem pooches is satisfyingly full. However, when eccentric millionaire Ken Culberson and his charming but utterly undisciplined golden retriever Maggie arrive in her office, she finds herself trying to cope with "six impossible things before breakfast". Ken is absolutely convinced(encouraged by an unscrupulous psychic)that Maggie's misbehaviors are occuring because she is possessed by his dead ex-wife Mary whom he's equally convinced that he's killed, albeit by accident. A threat that Maggie's running wild in his trailer park may lead to her incarceration by the Animal Control League achieves what neither his psychiatrist nor his social worker have been able to accomplish and brings him to Allie, begging for help. Dubious about Ken's sanity but a [turkey] for a dog in obvious trouble, Allie agrees to make a site visit where she discovers that the bones that Maggie's been gleefully draging home recently probably aren't animal bones and calls the police. Before he's taken to the station to discuss the matter, Ken asks Allie to assume temporary charge of Maggie and emends his will (which names Maggie as sole heir to his millions) making Allie her legal guardian. While the police are still investigating the matter, Ken is released and then murdered. Suddenly Allie is confronted with a plethora of equally unsavory claimants to Maggie's paw and fortune...one of whom is probably Ken's killer. Finding out which puts her own life on the line in the chilling denouement to this thoroughly satisfying, delightfully whimsical whodunnit.

Molly is just plain unlikable. She's nosy and annoying, and it's a wonder Tommy hasn't just thrown her in jail already. There's no reason whatsoever for her to be sticking her nose into these murders and putting herself into dangerous situations, and the author's done a terrible job at showing us her motivation for doing so. Instead she's just made her come off as simply meddlesome and stupid.

Also, for a series, it's disappointing that the secondary characters haven't been more developed. In the six years the series has spanned, we barely know her best friend Lauren. Jim is just kind of there. And with all they've been through, you'd think by now Stephanie could've been softened just a bit and made a bit more human, instead of continuing to be such an overblown adversary.

Ms. O'Kane has good potential for a well-written series, but she really needs to work on character development. Oh, and she needs to cut her use of the word "trot" -- no one "trots" around as much as Molly and her friends and family do.

Molly, an eyewitness to the event, is the only clown not under suspicion because someone can state where she was during the shooting. Molly learns that several of the suspects have motives to want the teacher dead including a former lover and the mother of the student she was having an affair with despite the rules. Having solved homicides in the past, Molly decides to do her own brand of investigating that places her in jeopardy from an individual who wants the killer's identity to remain anonymously hidden behind greasepaint.

In Leslie O'Kane's fictionalized school, the parents and the administration seem more dangerous than the students are as violence permeates the system. While not realistic, it allows for escapism from the real world. WHEN THE FAX LADY SINGS is an intriguing novel that is characterized by Ms. O'Kane's distinct style of humor.

Harriet Klausner

The local school board is having a meeting about funding and where it should go -- to the arts or to sports. As we all know, the school disagreement of sports VS art has been handed down from generation to generation all over America, but Leslie O'Kane's mystery adds an unusual twist to the subject. School politics rears its ugly head once again, and the typical group of common folk who have become indifferent, sanctimonious, and offensive (with the exception of Molly's dad), due to the power they think their seats possess, are endanger of being toppled from their self-glorified thrones by their leader. Molly, along with her parents, goes to a meeting knowing that the board president has threatened to expose a secret in her father's past if he doesn't agree to vote for sports. After returning from a private meeting, Sylvia Greene, the president, falls to poison in front of a crowd of parents and live on the town's local TV channel. Molly's father is being blamed. Molly learns her father's secret and decides to put her self in the way of danger, literally, to clear his name and find the real killer.

You gotta love the sense of humor Leslie O'Kane gives Mollie; it's laugh out loud funny. The subject of sports VS art may be an old one, but the mystery plot is fresh. The false leads kept me going, and the sub-characters are true enough that they will most likely remind you of someone you know, too.

The school budget is under siege as there is only enough funds to support either the arts curriculum or the sports program. Board president Sylvia Greene runs a vicious campaign using blackmail to force her peers to commit the money to the sports program. For instance, she threatens to reveal a nasty secret from Charlie's past if he fails to vote for her side. During the vote itself, someone poisons Sylvia with the main suspicion falling on Charlie. Unable to believe her father would kill someone, Molly places herself at risk to flush out a murderer.

Just like a FAX OF LIFE, most fans of the Molly Masters mysteries know that the novels are some of the best remedies for lifting weary individuals out of their slump. Leslie O'Kane has a wicked sense of humor that especially surfaces when Molly designs a greeting card. THE SCHOOL BOARD MURDERS is a good juicy mystery filled with red herrings that turns the unexpected story line into an excellent hard to figure out puzzler. JUST THE FAX, this tale is a fun book that enhances an entertaining series that leaves readers contented, but wanting more works from Ms. O'Kane.

Harriet Klausner END

I found the whole story confusing. It was very hard to keep track of who was who, and some things that were thrown in as "red herrings" made absolutely no sense at all in the end. I hope the author can get back on track, because I really enjoyed the first book of this series, but I've been let down since.

Molly has turned into nothing more than a nosy, annoying pain in the .... She sticks her nose into situations that have nothing to do with her, and doesn't seem to think the police can manage to do their jobs withour her "tactful nudging" in the right direction. The fact that Tommy allows her to keep intruding into his investigations is just getting silly already -- almost as silly as her constantly teaming up with Stephanie and taking her orders, when she can't stand this woman.

It's time to put this series to bed before it turns to plain God-awful.