Trouble in Mudbug by Jana DeLeon

I started out enjoying this one, but by the end was not. I'm not sure it's even worth wasting the time to enumerate the ways in which this one didn't work for me, but hey, why not?

I think that part of the problem I had with this novel was one of expectation. Whether it's fair or not, I went into this expecting a funny mystery. The main character, Maryse, is a botanist who lives in a bayou near a little town in Louisiana. Her mother-in-law, Helena, who she fully believes was evil, has died. Unfortunately that is not the end of her dealings with the woman, who is now a ghost and following Maryse around, trying to get her to figure out who killed her. Meanwhile a very sexy man has shown up at her office and flashed her a winning smile, and she's not sure what to do about it.

I was expecting a funny mystery in which we probably find out who murdered Helena. That's not what this book is, though. For one thing -- spoilers ahead! -- we don't find out who killed Helena. However Helena has left Maryse some property and under some arcane covenants on the property Maryse can't leave the town limits for one week until the paperwork is finalized. Meanwhile someone is trying, rather clumsily, to kill Maryse. But frankly that isn't the plot of the novel, either, it's just an excuse for a Woman in Peril story in which Luc, Mister Winning Smile, gets to protect her and win her over.

I had many problems with this novel. First of all, the only likable character is Helena, the supposedly-evil ghost. Maryse was pretty awful, her two friends weren't any better, and Luc was portrayed very inconsistently. Maryse knows someone is trying to kill her. Helena keeps saying there are important things they need to talk about, and Maryse keeps refusing to talk to her, saying that she's too busy and to go away. Yeah, that's the way to handle a dangerous situation -- try not to gather any useful information that could help you. Meanwhile the love interest is portrayed very inconsistently. We start out with him portrayed -- in his own point of view -- as a good looking ladies man who is there to charm Maryse to find out what he needs. In other words, the sort of man who uses his looks and uses women for his own gain. However later we are told that he's always leaping in to rescue women, which is not at all consistent with the earlier description, in his own head. Huh.

There is also the problem of the town of Mudbug, population 500. We are told that it has eight buildings (by which I suppose they mean a business district with 8 buildings). It's a very small place. However over the course of the novel we find out it has a hospital, two hotels, a cafe, and a very fancy restaurant that you need to get a reservation at weeks in advance. Umm, towns of 500 people don't have hospitals, and who the hell is filling up a restaurant in a town of 500 people to the extent you can't get a table without reserving weeks in advance? Presumably not the locals, given that Maryse has only eaten there once in her life. Also, Maryse is not able to leave the city limits, and yet she spends quite a bit of time out in the bayou. Is that within the city limits? I'm confused, and Mudbug was one of the things that strained credibility.

It got far worse, though. Maryse is a botanist, who is searching the bayou looking for "the" cure for cancer, as if such a thing could possibly exist. That one destroyed my willing suspension of disbelief, and DeLeon never regained my trust. Further, the samples that she's sending off to a lab for testing are flying through the tests at a truly impossible rate. The book only covers a few days, and yet we're told by the lab that two rounds of tests were successful. Medical testing simply doesn't operate at that pace. And then we eventually learn that the plants she's found aren't really a cure for cancer, but they're growing in polluted water and are therefore radioactive (!!!) and feeding it to someone is like giving them radiation treatment. (!!!!!!!) Holy schnikes, that's bad writing. I mean really, really bad.

After that, what more can I say? She is shot at and her cabin explodes, but she doesn't spend more than a few moments talking to the police. Her mother-in-law and good-for-nothing ex-husband both explain that they treated her badly because she was such a good person. At the end she instantly develops a completely new outlook on life, and now everything will be just fine. And she and Luc develop insta-love, even though they haven't taken the time to actually get to know each other. And there is still the question of who killed Helena hanging in the background so we can make it a series. Gah. It started out sharp and funny. Why did it have to turn out so bad?