Great Book, Bad Marketing

I found the White Magic Five and DIme while browsing through eBooks. From the cover art and the description, this one looked like a nice new-age themed chic-lit novel.

It’s not.

It’s nothing at all like that.

Just to be clear: I really enjoyed this book.

Unfortunately, this novel suffers from extraordinarily poor marketing, beginning with the description:

Much to Alanis McLachlan’s surprise, her estranged con-woman mother has left her an inheritance: The White Magic Five & Dime, a shop in tiny Berdache, Arizona. Reluctantly traveling to Berdache to claim her new property, Alanis decides to stay and pick up her mother’s tarot business in an attempt to find out how she died.

With help from a hunky cop and her mother’s live-in teenage apprentice, Alanis begins faking her way through tarot readings in order to win the confidence of her mother’s clients.  But the more she uses the tarot deck, the more Alanis begins to find real meaning in the cards … and the secrets surrounding her mother’s demise.

This sounds like standard chic-lit with a bit of a low-key family mystery thrown in for dramatic effect. In reality, the book is about Alanis, a woman who survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of hardened criminals. She manages to escape by conning her con-artist mother but can’t shake the law of the street. Well into adulthood, Alanis is convinced she owes her mother a heavy debt. When a lawyer locates Alanis to pass along the news that mom has not only been murdered but left behind an inheritance in her name, she decides it’s time to pay back her debt by finding the killer and exacting revenge street-style. Alanis does this knowing that there is a very strong possibility that her mother is using the inheritance to set-up her estranged daughter for some hardcore revenge post-mortem.

The fact that Alanis has been living in secret, under an assumed name, with her every move entirely focused on not being found by her mother, makes the letter-from-the lawyer even more interesting.

That’s where this book begins.

It’s a murder mystery set in a small town with a woman cast as the primary hard-hitting tough-as-nails mystery-solving hero. The new-age magic and tarot cards are merely part of the story because…and only because…that was the narcissistic mother’s last con-game.

This book reminded me of the  V I Warshawski books by Sara Paretsky. I’ve posted quotes from both Hockensmith and Paretsky to this blog – go ahead and compare the two!

I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it, but ignore the marketing material – here is a more accurate description:

The White Magic Five & Dime is hard-hitting murder mystery featuring tough people with difficult lives. There’s abuse, neglect, and extremely non-motherly actions; but there is also a solved mystery, adventure and….ultimately…a daughter who manages to put the ghost of her mother to rest.

Bloodless Blush

Quote

Amazon.com

“Have you ever seen a goth blush? It pretty much kills the whole bloodless/undead thing they’re going for, so I’m sure they hate it.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Honest Lies

Quote

Amazon.com

“I don’t know.”
“But if you had to guess—?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Because you’re hoping I’ll say something different.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Then don’t tell me to be honest.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Romantic Stupidity

Quote

Amazon.com

“Damn. Up till that moment, the romantic part of me still had been hoping I was wrong. Your romantic parts can be really dumb.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Life Is Knowing Yourself

Quote

Amazon.com

“Every decision is yours to make. The trick is knowing who you are. Are you the kind of person who’d do this, the kind of person who’d do that, or the kind of person who’d do the thing the first two people would think was nuts?…Life can be a bitch, they say, but she’s beautiful, too. Love the beauty without limit, and the bitchy you might learn to love…even if you never understand it.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Getting To The Dawn

Quote

Amazon.com

“A new day has dawned, and today the whole world looks different. Just take a peek out your window. You never noticed all those sunflowers in your yard, did you? And check it out: a naked kid on a horse! Wow! You sure didn’t see that when you peeped out through the blinds at midnight. In fact, you didn’t see anything at all but the blackness of your own despair. Well, it’s always darkest before the dawn, they say. And they’re right. The trick is surviving the night.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Appearance of Respectability

Quote

Amazon.com

“He looked like every Kiwanis member you’ve ever met: a big, doughy pillar of the community. A lot of those pillars are rotten inside, though. Believe me. I’ve seen “respectable” people do things that would shock Genghis Khan.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco

Destiny of Names

Quote

Amazon.com

“I got the feeling he’d looked and dressed like this since he was eight, mustache included. Maybe if his parents had called him Rocco he would’ve turned out differently. But they’d made him a Eugene, and that’s destiny.”

The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith, Lisa Falco