Book club discusses " Whack a Mole"

Last week, the book club meet for its end of the year session to discuss Chris Grabenstein's Whack a Mole. This is the third of the "John Ceepak mystery" series--the newish member of the Sea Haven Police Department which covers a tourist strip of the New Jersey Shore. In this novel, events evolve into a bizarre police matter when John and his young partner Danny Boyle follow up on the discovery of body parts which leads to a major investigation of the community the conclusion of multiple bodies and deaths. John is much more alarmed when it appears the killer is gearing to murder again.

Grisly in a few incidents but bone-tickling in so many more, this story of an angry killer and the determined beach cops won over the book club attendees. Our discussions included the unlikelihood of multiple murders in a tourist haven although there's the transit aspect of the murder victims. As it turns out, the victims are women passing through resort looking for as one retired cop says "sun, sand and sex." That is the ideal client for a resort area. I thought the resort community could lead to good crime stories with the revolving population and credited writer Grabenstein with a good setting.

And the setting was well-written too. One person noted how it seemed memorable and another how despite the fact that the book introduced a number of characters,
they were distinctive.

One distinctive quality for Ceepak was that he claims (as does the writer about the character for that matter) to never lie. Ever. That's a great personal claim but we did discuss how that could operate in personal life or Ceepak's professional life.

Otherwise, we did discuss some other interesting characters, the set-up of the
murder's identity, inter-office relations with the police, and a surprise shoot-out which ended in a way you would not expect.

I also discussed Grabenstein's professional background and mentioned his work as a ad writer and in comedy. One attendee said his writing took a little time to adjust to with his frequently short sentences. And as Grabenstein writes about his writing background--the work is fast for quick consumption. I have a pix of Grabestein above from his www.chrisgrabenstein.com website.

Again, the wacky-titled Whack a Mole won us over as a readers and some have gone on to read the earlier books--there are two others in this series now.