Review & Giveaway: Death in a Difficult Position by Diana Killian

Paperback, 304 pages

Expected publication: September 6th 2011 by Berkley

more details...

ISBN0425243818 (ISBN13: 9780425243817) primary languageEnglish

In Stillbrook, New Jersey, A. J. Alexander runs a yoga studio, Sacred Balance, that she inherited from her favorite aunt, Diantha. Lily Martin, formerly A.J.'s studio manager is now running a rival studio called Yoga Meridian. Lily gets all fired up when she hears about the new Reverend David Goode in town. Apparently, he thinks yoga is derived from demonic practices and he tries to convince his parishoners that they will go to hell if they practice at any of the yoga studios. The Reverend wants to shut them all down and he is  vehemently vocal about it.

The hot-tempered Lily begs A.J. to try to talk to the fire and brimstone spewing Goode  into thinking differently about yoga but that is like talking to a brick wall. Funny how it turns out the righteous Reverend is not quite so good himself. It seems he has a few skeletons in his closet, so, it's no surprise one morning he is found dead and it's obviously murder.

Since Lily was so vocal about her condemnation of Reverend Goode, the police think she could be the killer. Lily wants A.J. to use her sleuthing skills to try to find the real killer. That sure puts A.J. in a difficult position! She ends up having to do a lot of digging into Goode's past and what she finds is mindblowing! Reverend Goode has been quite the bad boy for some time and not just locally.

Killian presents a great mystery with this one. First, I thought the killer was one person and then another. She had me stumped! A.J.s  mother was a character I really liked. She and her Golden Gumshoe friends added a lot of spice and humor to the book. 4****

Although this is # 4 in the Mantra for Murder series, it can be read as a stand-alone. For more about the author, you can visit her on Goodreads or Facebook.

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by Berkley in exchange for my honest opinion.

To celebrate the release of Death in a Difficult Position, Berkley is allowing me to host a giveaway for one copy of the book. Open to US only and the deadline to enter is September 30th at 5 PM (est). Please be sure to leave an e mail address in your comment. Bonus entries available for this contest are as follows:

+1 for posting on your facebook page with link to giveaway
+2 for being a follower, old or new. Just remind me how you follow and under what name.
+3 for blogging (sidebar is fine) or tweeting about the giveaway. Leave me a link, please.

Good luck!