Review: Margarita Nights
Margarita Nights
Phyllis Smallman
McArthur & Company
ISBN 1552786994
Trade Paperback
Some women just pick the wrong guy to fall in love with.  Sherri Travis is one.  She loves Jimmy Travis.  I’m not sure why.  He is a golf pro from a better social class than Sherri, and he tends to get into all kinds of trouble.  Money trouble.  Woman trouble.  Stuff like that.  Sherri is trying to divorce Jimmy, which makes his mother very happy.  Jimmy?  Not so much.  He can’t/won’t accept that Sherri really means it.  And since she keeps letting him back into her bed, I can see why he is having a hard time believing her.
Sherri tends bar at the Sunset Bar and Grill in Jacaranda, Florida.  She likes her job.  She meets lots of people, has friends of all kinds. She’s been doing it long enough that she can get into that groove, do her job, and still think about other things without making a mess behind the bar.
When the police tell her that Jimmy is dead, blown up in the same explosion that destroyed his boat, Sherri refuses to believe it.  She is convinced, based on her knowledge of Jimmy and his character, that he has taken this opportunity to skip town, get out of whatever hot water he’s currently in, and he’ll come back when the dust settles.  Sherri decides to find out why Jimmy skipped town; she thinks this will get the police off her back.  They think she killed him, and they have good reason to think that: she’s the beneficiary on a large insurance policy and she
threatened to kill him not all that long before the boat blew up.
Using her connections and her listening skills (bartenders do tend to be good at this), she does her best to figure out what Jimmy was up to.  Of course, there are people in Jacaranda who don’t take kindly to this interest.  The police aren’t thrilled about her poking into things; the people involved with Jimmy are none too happy, and they make their displeasure known.  Still, Sherri persists and figures out what really happened.
I found Margarita Nights to be entertaining and well written.  Smallman knows how to plot, how to write believable characters (even if I don’t particularly LIKE Sherri’s inability to let go of Jimmy), and how to put the reader smack dab in the middle of Jacaranda and its environs.
Margarita Nights is the first in a series; Sex in a Sidecar has just come out.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren.
February 24, 2010
Tags: mystery Posted in: Full Reviews
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