Title: The Clockwork Teddy
Author: John J. Lamb
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery
Copyright Date: 2008
Print Date: October 2008
ISBN: 9780425224298
Pages: 269 + Teddy Bear Artisan Profile
Series: 4th of the Bear Collector's Mysteries
Book Description (from back cover):
Retired San Francisco cop Brad Lyon and his wife, Ashleigh, have been settling into a comfortable life in the Shenandoah Valley, collecting and creating adorable teddy bears. But when they take a return trip to California, things suddenly turn ugly...
Sometines you shouldn't go home again. When Brad and Ashleigh Lyon return to San Francisco for the first time since they moved to Virginia, they're looking forward to catching up with friends and family. But instead, they witness a robbery at a teddy bear show — and then, when a cutting-edge robot teddy bear is found at a murder scene, Brad's former partner enlists the bear-making couple as fur-ensic experts.
At least the investigation will give them the opportunity to spend more time with their daughter, Heather, an undercover detective on the force. But as Brad and Ash unravel the myster, they run the risk of coming to a grizzly end...
Comments:
I was so glad to finally meet the Lyons' daughter and only wished I could have met the son. Maybe sometime soon. This book also showed some other (non-relative) relationships (i.e. Brad and his former SFPD partner, Brad and a distateful acquaintance, etc.). I enjoyed this glimse into their (the Lyons) various relationships. The teddy involved sounded pretty cool. I'm looking forward to getting ahold of and reading the next in the series, The Treacherous Teddy.
I do want to add, I really hope acronym FUBAR isn't defined again in the next book and all future books (UPDATE: It's my understanding that the 5th book is also the last. From what I gather, they weren't selling well enough.). The way it's defined in the book draws so much attention to it that it's almost worse than if he out-and-out said the word he's alluding to.
Title: The Crafty Teddy
Author: John J. Lamb
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery
Copyright Date: 2007
Print Date: November 2007
ISBN: 9780425218853
Pages: 288 + Teddy Bear Artisan Profile
Series: 3rd of the Bear Collector's Mysteries
Book Description (from back cover):
Retired San Francisco cop Brad Lyon is settling into a quieter life with his wife, Ashleigh, in Virginia's mountain country, where they collect and create teddy bears. But even here, stuff happens...
The peace of the Shenandoah Valley is shattered when an intruder breaks into the Lyon home and makes off with their antique Farnell Alpha teddy bear — one of the most celebrated stuffed animals in history, and also Brad's gift to Ash on their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Afterward, life seems to be getting back to normal — until a trio of Japanese gangsters inexplicably shows up in town, and then the local museum director is found dead. Even though it all seems a bit fur-fetched, Brad knows he's got a 187 on his hands — that's California penal code for murder...
Comments:
I'm definitely liking this series more as it goes on. It's making me wonder about what it'd be like to try making a bear myself. And then I remember that I'd have to sew... =)
I was pleased to see the story of how the Teddy Bear came about/got its name, since the story matched what I read in Bear-ology: Fascinating Bear Facts, Tales & Trivia.
I originally posted here that I wanted to see Brad and Ashleigh's kids in a future book... then I glanced at the blurb on the back cover of book 4 and, what do you know? The daughter's in it.
Anyway, I have book 4 and should get to it semi-soon. I've yet to get ahold of book 5, but don't think it will be too long a wait (or maybe that's wishful thinking...com'on paperbackswap).
Title: The False-Hearted Teddy
Author: John J. Lamb
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery
Copyright Date: 2007
Print Date: June 2007
ISBN: 9780425216101
Pages: 255 + Teddy Bear Artisan Profile
Series: 2nd of the Bear Collector's Mysteries
Book Description (from back cover):
Former homicide detective Brad Lyon has happily settled into retirement with his wife, Ashleigh, and their new business: crafting artisan teddy bears. They even take their line of Lyon's Tigers and Bears on the road to Baltimore, the site of a big-time bear show.
But ex-cop Brad senses something sinister when he witnesses a domestic dispute between the couple behind the hugely popular line of Cheery Cherub Bears. And a second scuffle soon has the bear aficionados talking: Another designer has accused the award-winning couple of stealing ideas for their furry angel bears. The tension is enough to give one of the designers an asthma attack, but after using her inhaler, she clutches at her throat — and dies. Baltimore brass deems it a death by natural causes. But Brad and Ash's suspicions have already taken wing ...
Comments:
I liked this one better then the 1st, and I'm definitely getting into the series — and becoming more interested in teddy bears.
I do have to wonder at it being repetedly stressed that Brad doesn't like cozy mysteries because the police come across as bumbling, etc. All the while, he's continually lecturing the cops about how they should do things or what conclusions they should come to.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading more of this series.
Title: A Mournful Teddy
Author: John J. Lamb
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery
Copyright Date: 2006
Print Date: August 2006
ISBN: 0425211126
Pages: 289 + Teddy Bear Artisan Profile
Series: 1st of the Bear Collector's Mysteries
Book Description (from back cover):
Retired San Francisco cop Brad Lyon is settling into a quieter life with his wife, Ashleigh, in Virginia's mountain country, where they collect and create teddy bears. But even here, stuff happens...
The Sound and the Furry
The day is here — and Brad Lyon is helping his wife put the finishing touches on her best bears, just in time for the Shenandoah Valley Teddy Bear Extravaganza. The event will draw fur-ball fanatics from near and far to buy, sell, or simply ogle the bears. But the main event will be the showing of the Mourning Bear, made to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic — and worth a hefty $150,000.
Then a local also meets a watery grave — and Brad Lyon spots the body floating in the Shenandoah. Old habits die hard, so Brad starts investigating like a homicide cop and finds that the deceased might have had a connection to the Mourning Bear. But the local law would prefer that Brad keep his mouth sewn shut...
Comments:
Despite the slow start (twice...over a year apart), I enjoyed this book. I've already read the 2nd book as well, and will probably be reading the 3rd soon.
Overall, I think Brad is a good and likeable character. With that in mind, Brad does "say" a couple things that just got on my nerves a bit. I think I may have gotten too sensitive, but there's no accounting for mood.
Anyway, at one point he says (in his narration, p94), As an added bonus, the expression "Houston, we have a problem" would never have made it into popular language, to be used by a generation of dullards who know more about the Olsen twins than they do about the amazing program that put human beings on the moon.
Seeing as I'm what, 2 yrs older than the Olsen twins, I'm thinking I'm part of that "generation of dullards." Now, to be perfectly honest while I couldn't care less about the Olsen twins, I also don't really care about Apollo 13 or "the amazing program that put human beings on the moon." But does Mr. John J. Lamb think that the "dullard" generation doesn't read? Or doesn't he care? Or does he think it's just part of the charcacter Brad Lyon and that makes it acceptable?
Another bit that irritated me was the reference (there's at least one, but I think I remember two) to females liking "bodice-ripping romances." Uh, get with the times. This book was published in 2006; I would hope such references (and terminology) would reflect that.
So by the time I got through those references, I was in no mood to read, "Okay, I know what you're thinking." (p208) He most certainly did not know what I was thinking, as the following statement demonstrated. Now I KNOW that's being too sensitive, but I was in a picky frame of mind by then.
(I want to point out that I'm aware a person can't please everybody. And that it's difficult if not impossible to not say anything that someone finds offensive. However, that awareness didn't stop me from feeling irritated.)
If you push past the slow start and ignore certain references — this is a fun beginning to an interesting series.
Title: The Clockwork Teddy
