When Anastasia Pollack’s husband permanently cashes in his chips at a roulette table in Vegas, her comfortable middle-class life craps out. She’s left with two teenage sons, a mountain of debt, and her hateful, cane-wielding Communist mother-in-law. Not to mention stunned disbelief over her late husband’s secret gambling addiction, and the loan shark who’s demanding fifty thousand dollars.… dollars.
Anastasia’s job as crafts editor at American Woman magazine proves no respite when she discovers a dead body glued to her desk chair. The victim, fashion editor Marlys Vandenburg, collected enemies and ex-lovers like Jimmy Choos on her ruthless climb to editor-in-chief. But when evidence surfaces of an illicit affair between Marlys and Anastasia’s husband, Anastasia becomes the prime suspect.
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There’s a reason why Winston’s Anastasia Pollack character has been called “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum” by Kirkus Reviews. Winston’s character is witty, inventive, and determined. In ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN, the first book in Winston’s cozy mystery series, Pollack finds herself scrambling to deal with her children, a demanding mother-in-law, and a loan shark trying to collect on gambling debts when her husband suddenly dies at the roulette table. Can it get any worse? Of course it can as Anastasia finds a dead body glued to her chair while working as a crafts editor. Humor and mystery abound in this novel! Don’t miss it.
Whew! Just finished Lois Winston’s Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun. What a blast! Shakespeare quoting parrots, mother vs. card-carrying Communist mother-in-law, threatening mafia loan shark. This book has it all, and just when you think nothing else could possibly go wrong . . . it does. Entertainment at its finest. Thank you Lois Winston!
Anastasia has more bad luck than any woman on the face of the earth. Her recently deceased husband left her swimming in debt. She can’t find a quiet place in her home to come up with a plan to deal with the situation because her mother and mother-in-law, along with their pets, are living with her and fighting all day long. To make matters worse, she’s being framed for a murder at work. My blood pressure goes up just thinking about it.
Anastasia Pollack learns where late husband kept secrets. Big Secrets. And then her magazine co-worker gets dead, and Anastasia is suspect numero uno. What’s a gal to do but prove her innocence?
Lots of Jersey sass in this delightful first-in-series cozy, spiced with a great cast, a communist, and the mob—this is Jersey after all.
A great start to a funny and masterfully written series. Love the craft projects as I’m a crafter from way back. Recommended.
Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun is the first book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series and I can’t wait to read more! When Anastasia’s husband dies she inherits her mother-in-law who is a nasty, mean Communist! She know lives with her and her two teenage sons. Finding a dead body at work and being hounded by a loan shark over debt her late husband owes, Anastasia has her hands full. The characters are great and the story well written. A very enjoyable read! Definitely recommend!
Bonus points for a creatively gruesome murder weapon.
Anastasia Pollack’s career as crafts editor at a New York women’s magazine is a unique premise for a mystery series. In the opening pages, recently widowed Anastasia finds out her dearly departed hubby wasn’t the helpful partner she’d married. If possible, her life gets worse when a coworker is killed and guess who is the prime suspect? Bad luck sticks to Anastasia, well . . . like hot glue.
Surrounded by a hilarious cast of characters including two teenage sons, two obnoxious mothers and their pets, and helpful but bumbling coworkers, Anastasia has so much on her plate the reader genuinely questions whether she’ll find a way out of the mess. Especially when the mob gets involved.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical of this book at first.
Two reviews on the cover compared Anastasia Pollack to Stephanie Plum in the Janet Evanovich series. If you know anything about my reading tastes, you’d know that my mental vacation to Trenton, NJ to visit Stephanie’s friends and family is the highlight of my annual literary adventures. Could anyone write characters as memorable as Lula and Ranger?
But the reviewers were right.
This story is set in New Jersey with a cast of wacky family and friends, but Anastasia is an older, more mature answer to Stephanie Plum. The only way she can cope with the truly horrible things that keep messing up her life is to battle back using her wit and cleverness. Anastasia corrals her communist mother-in-law, clueless mother, and entitled sons to help out for a change, for cripes’ sake.
The mystery kept me laughing and guessing whodunnit until the end.
If you like solid mysteries filled with ironic one-liners, you’ll like this series. I’m excited to continue reading the rest of them. Lois Winston includes craft directions at the end for the projects mentioned in the book.
Much has been made about the humor in Lois Winston’s first Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries Series, Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, and rightfully so. Anastasia is a Jersey girl often compared to the equally funny Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich’s series. Jersey is where the comparison ends.
Laughing out loud, as I did when reading this cozy mystery, is related mainly to Anastasia’s acerbic wit. As a reader, I always welcome humor. However, humor is also a way to great way to get across some rather serious ideas. I’m pleased to say that this book has ideas as well as laughs.
Anastasia is far more mature, not “feisty” and “spunky” like Stephanie Plum, and certainly not a superhero who overcomes all adversity. Anastasia is a real woman, an ordinary woman, who manages to find internal resources to overcome some very serious challenges.
She is a middle-aged woman working as a crafts editor for a women’s magazine. She finds herself in the middle of an epic sh*t storm when her husband dies suddenly. She learns that he has emptied out the family bank account to feed his gambling addiction, and that he is in debt to the mob. A mobster is calling and demanding money. Then Anastasia finds the body of her colleague dead and glued to her office desk at work.
Things go downhill from there. The police show signs of thinking she’s guilty of murder. Then her house is broken into – three times! On top of that, she’s living with her obnoxious and very fervent Communist mother-in-law who demands special treatment for herself and her dog. Anastasia’s narcissistic and very selfish mother (and her cat) shows up and starts taking up space. And there’s that parrot mouthing off, quoting Shakespeare no less. There’s not enough money to pay the electric bill or feed Anastasia’s two teenage boys.
Reading this as it unfolds (and laughing, too) led me to think about how people handle a major life crisis…..or two or three or four as in the case of Anastasia. Her wit and her caustic asides are fundamentally acting as a coping mechanism. She wants to laugh so she won’t fall apart. Her asides suggest that her marriage wasn’t all that great, and that she was just hanging in there. The two mothers are ongoing problems too. The commie mother-in-law Lucille struck me as someone on the edge of dementia who is unable to cope with her son’s death, much less the awareness that he was a thoroughly reprehensible character responsible for three people’s deaths. And Anastasia’s mother is even more obnoxious, a childlike woman who seems to think her highest goal in life is to acquire another husband (number 5? number 6?). Neither lifts a finger to help Anastasia. Another interesting character is Erika, a coworker of Anastasia, who has been browbeaten by every man in her life, starting with her father.
So we see a woman in this book who normally does a great job of taking care of everyone around her, but who is not so great at taking care of herself. Anastasia’s wit keeps her from having a breakdown under the stress. However, part of her own character development in this series will be to learn how to say “no” to the mothers, how to get those teenage boys to help out more, how to assert herself at work, and how to find the courage to ask out that good-looking dude who is renting space over the garage. I think there are more than a few readers out there who can relate to this challenge.
“Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun” earns 5/5 Sticky Situations…Engaging Fun!
Lois Winston has penned a delightful first-in-the-series full of wonderful, some cringe-worthy, characters, quips and digs, a fast-paced mystery journey, and fun crafting! Beware of a few curses…teenagers, you know. Anastasia Pollack, widowed mother of two teens, is an admirable, yet flawed, character in the face of a husband who has plunged her into serious financial distress. She finds herself hounded by her husband’s creditors, ok, loan sharks, but it’s the discovery of the dead body of a co-worker glued to Anastasia’s office chair that makes her suspect primo. From there Lois takes readers in and around the murder investigation racked with secrets, revelations, and close scrutiny by law enforcement. A delightfully engaging book with a well-written first-person narrative filled with clever insights, inner thoughts, and great descriptions. She also includes banter between the characters that illustrates personality, tone, and emotion keeping me eager to turn each page. Add a mother-in-law from hell and a mother not much better…well, you’ve got to experience that on your own! She provided a satisfying ending, but it popped up a little earlier than I like…I’m partial to suspense to the end. Don’t forget the bonus, a perfect way to make something so special with marvelous “Anastasia’s Crafts” ideas: Handmade Bridal Tennies, Birdseed Roses, Recycled Jeans Placemats, Fourth of July Clay Pot Candles, and Decoupaged Flag Tray.
Absolutely hilarious! Can’t remember the last time I laughed out load at a book so many times.