Sandie Herron knows just when to step up when I’m on deadline for Library Journal. She offered a couple reviews, and I grabbed them. I’ll have a review of a new book on Tuesday, release day for it. In the meantime, thank you, Sandie, for reviewing this audiobook.

Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun   
Written by Lois Winston
Narrated by Alexandra Bitton-Bailey
Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 1
Unabridged Audiobook
Publisher:  Lois Winston (9/23/2022)
Listening Length: 8 hours, 20 minutes
ASIN:  B0BG8ZM57P

While the first in this humorous craft-related cozy mystery series was first published in 2010, the audiobook was first published in 2022.  With a New Jersey-accented narrator making this completely authentic, we learn that Anastasia Pollack has just been informed of her husband’s death in Las Vegas.  Problem is, Anastasia had no idea her husband was in Las Vegas nor that he had a gambling problem.  He had plowed through their nest egg, ravaged their home equity, cancelled the kids’ college funds, maxed out the credit cards, and borrowed from a loan shark who now wants to collect.  Anastasia’s grumpy, Communist mother-in-law Lucille and her growling dog were currently living with her since her apartment and life savings hidden there had recently burned down.  To make matters worse, Anastasia’s mother and her cat arrive on her doorstep, newly widowed herself with nowhere to live. 

With Janet Evanovich’s character Stephanie Plum as a role model, and no one to rely on but herself, Anastasia returns to work as crafts editor at the New Jersey offices of American Woman magazine.  There were plenty of shenanigans going on there as well with the fashion editor considering herself way out of anyone’s league.  On this particular day, she breezed in several hours late and dressed to kill, including diamonds on loan from a New York jeweler.

Anastasia is called home to rent the apartment over the garage to a well-known photographer happy to find a place close to the city yet far enough away that neighbors don’t accuse him of running a meth lab rather than a dark room.  Returning to work to prepare for the morning’s photo shoot, Anastasia finds the fashion editor sitting at her desk with hot glue dripping from her body and minus the diamonds.

Since the glue gun was hers and she found the body, Anastasia is high on the list of suspects and rallies her co-workers to help her investigate.  Meanwhile at home she’s just trying to get her mothers and their pets to do more than growl at each other and help with her two teenage boys.  She’s called home, again, to find the house ransacked by Ricardo, the loan shark, looking for his 50 G’s.  Now the police were involved, just what she was told not to do.

Anastasia’s efforts to get out of this pickle had me laughing out loud.  But her situation got worse, much worse, before she found relief. The author managed to keep the sarcasm light enough to be funny and the consequences livable. I enjoyed this tale very much and will await the second in the series to come out on audio.  The narrator has agreed to read the entire series, always a plus in my book.  In the meantime, I hope Anastasia’s family stops squabbling!