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    Our Lady of Immaculate Deception: A Novel
    Our Lady of Immaculate Deception: A Novel
    Our Lady of Immaculate Deception: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Our Lady of Immaculate Deception: A Novel

    Written by Nancy Martin

    Narrated by Karen White

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Big truck, big dog, big hair. Bad attitude.

    Roxy Abruzzo, bestselling author Nancy Martin's latest creation, is the loud-mouthed, sexy, independent-minded niece of a Pittsburgh Mafia boss trying to go (mostly) straight. She'd like to stay completely out of her uncle Carmine's shady business dealings, though he's trying to reel her in. She'd like to concentrate on the architectural salvage business she runs mostly on the up-and-up for a tidy profit. She'd like to keep her rebellious teenage daughter on the straight and narrow. But Roxy knows where all the good intentions in the world usually lead, and when she can't help herself from tucking away an ancient Greek statue that's not really hers, she pays for it by getting caught up in the chaos surrounding the sordid murder of the statue's former owner, the heir to a billion-dollar Pittsburgh steel fortune.

    Of course, Roxy has plenty of help getting in and out of trouble, including her sidekick, "Nooch" Santonucci, who is too dumb to say no to whatever Roxy wants to do and strong enough to do it; her widowed aunt Loretta, a lawyer whose big hair and short skirts are as big a help to her in court as her brains; and Patrick Flynn, ex-marine, professional chef, and former high school flame, fresh from Afghanistan to torture Roxy, just like old times.

    With her wicked sense of humor and a devilishly clever new series premise, the author of the beloved Blackbird Sisters mysteries has crafted another mystery destined to be a bestseller.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 5, 2010
    ISBN9781400186563
    Our Lady of Immaculate Deception: A Novel
    Author

    Nancy Martin

    Winner of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement award for mystery writing from Romantic Times magazine, Nancy Martin announces the release of the 8th book in her popular Blackbird Sisters mystery series, NO WAY TO KILL A LADY. Set in Philadelphia, the story features three heiresses whose parents have run off with their trust funds. Now thay have a chance to regain their wealth when their aunt, "Madcap Maddy" Blackbird dies in a volcano and leaves her estate to the sisters. But Nora Blackbird soon discovers all the treasures in Aunt Maddy's house have disappeared...information that leads her to believe maybe Maddy didn't die the way everybody thinks. Author of 48 pop fiction novels in mystery, suspense, historical and romance genres, Nancy created The Blackbird Sisters in 2002--- mysteries about three impoverished heiresses who adventure in couture and crime --as if "Agatha Christie had wandered onto the set of Sex and The City." Nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 2002, HOW TO MURDER A MILLIONAIRE won the RT award for Best First Mystery and was a finalist for the Daphne DuMaurier Award. Currently, she is at work on the Roxy Abruzzo mystery series for St. Martin's Minotaur. In 2009 she received the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award for mystery writing. Nancy lives in Pittsburgh, serves on the board of Sisters in Crime and is a founding member of Pennwriters.

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    Reviews for Our Lady of Immaculate Deception

    3/5

    57 ratings8 reviews

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    • 2/5
      This is the first in a new series by Martin and features Roxy Arbruzzo. Arbruzzo runs a not-so-successful architectural salvage company and must earn money from other sources to make ends meet. She is given some salvage rights to the Hyde mansion after Mrs. Hyde burns the place down in a fit of pique. Among the things she takes away is a statue hidden away in the back yard and which she was not authorized to take. When Julius Hyde is murdered, the police are looking at everyone with a connection to Hyde and that includes Roxy. The family also wants their Greek antiquity back.I started this book with a great deal of anticipation (choosing this over Anne Perry's newest). Normally, I love new series. But this one is flawed on so many levels that I doubt that I’ll try the second in the series. The author spends almost no time in the beginning of the book to introduce her main character and allowing the reader to like her. She doesn’t even give us a description of the woman until around page 100. She also introduced many characters too quickly. I would expect to be introduced to ongoing characters, like Nooch and Rooney, but she also introduced us to every member of the Hyde family. By the time I figured out that I couldn’t even keep the Hyde brothers straight, I didn’t care about any of the characters, including Roxy.Finally, the book is being touted as “humorous,” but like other reviewers, I found myself asking humor? What humor? I understand that everyone sees humor in different ways, but I expected to at least occasionally smile. That didn’t happen. Perhaps I was too busy trying to figure out which Hyde brother the author was talking about to find the author humorous.Martin had such potential with Roxy, but fell so short. Perhaps later additions to the series will be better. Let's hope so.
    • 2/5
      Our Lady of Immaculate Deception was a book chosen for my book club and the first book that I had read by Martin. Martin delivers a very humorous book with more than a few twists and turns. Roxy is a very comical character who gets herself into some tight situations but she has a big heart and tries to do the right thing even for strangers finding themselves in need of her help. Roxy has some interesting friends who help her out and help to make the book even more interesting with Nooch, Rooney, Flynn, Loretta, and Sage. The book's mystery was pretty well set up because there were a lot of characters who wanted Julius dead. I did like how Martin provided the reader with multiple points of view giving readers a glimpse into secondary characters like Arden who helped flesh out the Hyde family. Overall Our Lady of Immaculate Deception gives the reader a mystery that also contains humor, family drama, a touch of romance, with a little bit of fun.
    • 4/5
      This is the first book in a spin-off series, of sorts, from the Blackbird Sisters; it involves a completely different member of the crime family Michael is the heir apparent to, and takes place in Pittsburgh, rather than Philly.It’s also a much rougher, seedier flavour of cozy mystery, set in a low income area with a high crime rate. Roxy owns an architectural salvage company, trying to support her daughter and avoid working for her uncle Carmine in the family business.Martin created Roxy as a deeply flawed, broken woman who uses an active sex life as a weapon, but seems to enjoy it not at all. She obviously cares a great deal, as she goes out of her way to shelter abused women, support her daughter, and keep her dim-witted friend from violating his parole, but her uber defensiveness is grating and her inability to connect with anyone makes it difficult for the reader to connect with her. It’s a very different take from the Blackbird Sisters, which didn’t shy away from dysfunction, but still managed to engage the reader.Different too is this story’s multiple POVs. When it works, it works brilliantly, offering an ending that might not be expected, but when it doesn’t it leaves the reader wondering why Martin bothered, or at least wondering why certain POVs were included.The parts were there for a very excellent read, but they just didn’t come together in a way that left me caring at all about any of the characters. I have the second book of what ended up being a 2 book series, but when I finished my re-read of this one, I found that I just didn’t have it in me to dip into this kind of dysfunction a second time. Maybe someday.
    • 4/5
      Roxy Abruzzo, tough & feisty, runs an architectural reclamation business, not always on the up & up, but hey, it makes her a living. Her current client, Julius Hyde, is dead as. His wife, Monica, has been looting her mother-in-law's house of high-end artwork for years and has torched it, which is where Roxy comes in... While salvaging the remains of the once great house Roxy stumbles upon a Greek antiquity of Achilles hidden in the garden and with the help of her loyal but not-so-bright muscle, Nooch, Roxy adds the statue to her cache of salvage items.Then there is Dorothy (Dodo) Hyde, matriarch, Julius' mother; living in a residential home and going in and out of a coma as desired... She's willing to write off her losses, after all these are her progeny, but not Achilles. Dodo sends her attorney, Henry, to get back her treasure or else.Also in the mix: Sage, Roxy's daughter who is living with Loretta, widowed aunt & tough-as-nails attorney; Flynn, Sage's father, ex-marine, & chef; and Roxy's Uncle Carmine, who is ill & would like Roxy to take over his business for him.I liked Roxy, her crazy family, & friends and I didn't figure out who-done-it, but I really didn't try as I was swept away with the story.There is no end to the action and on-the-edge humor, which can be compared to Carl Hiaasen, although not as finely crafted. But the book held my interest, I was up until 4:00 am in order to finish it.The book seemed very familiar to me, the name Abruzzo rang a bell. Then I remembered that I had begun another series, The Blackbird Sisters (which I dropped) had a character named Nick Abruzzo in it. Turns out to be by the same author. I know I'll not be returning to complete The Blackbird Sisters but I'll give Roxy a second go around.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book. It was pretty fast paced and just a fun mindless read. A good beach book if you don't want anything too deep. Roxy is spunky and a little out of control but a strong character with heart who has messed up but trying to be good. I'm reading the follow up and look forward to continuing reading about Roxy's life.
    • 3/5
      With a nod to her Blackbird Sisters series, Martin introduces us to Roxy Abruzzo, a slightly mob-connected, sex-obssessed, architectural salvage specialist. She and soon to be off parole assistant, Nooch, stumble onto a murder mystery after "salvaging" what turns out to be a priceless Greek statue from the Hyde estate. There are only so many incarnations of Stephanie Plum possible and although the mystery was fine, I don't know if I'll bother checking in with Roxy again.
    • 4/5
      Though I was disappointed to find out that Nancy Martin wouldn't be doing any more Blackbird books in the forseeable future, I was definitely looking forward to her new series beaturing Michael's half-sister, Roxy. Devoured it in a day. While it may take a while to warm up to Roxy, a wise-ass, smart-mouth single mom she's only one in a string of fascinating Pittsburgh characters I'm looking forward to getting to know as the series continues. The problem, now, is waiting patiently for book two.
    • 2/5
      Our Lady of Immaculate Deception - Nancy MartinThe synopsis of this book made it sound as if it were right up my alley. I love the Stephanie Plum character that Janet Evanovich writes about so when I saw Roxy Abruzzo, owner of Bada Bling Architectural Salvage, being compared to Stephanie Plum, I figured I would be in for a treat. Add to this that it was also supposed to be about the mob in Philadelphia and it appeared that it would have some interesting secondary characters, and there were even hints of it being funny. I thought I would be in reader’s heaven. I was wrong and so was the synopsis. Roxy is nothing like Stephanie or any other woman protagonist that I have read about lately. There are several story lines and at times it’s a bit difficult to remember just which is the main one - is it about the theft of a priceless salvaged artifact or is it about the murder of the multi-millionaire Julius Hyde who owned it; maybe the machinations of the millionaires family around his estate, can it be about the unscrupulous lawyer who seems to have his finger in every pie or is it about his drug addled art expert niece, or the fact that Roxy‘s mobbed up uncle wants her to work for “The Family“? This novel is all over the map with the numerous stories going on.I realize that a lot of my dissatisfaction was with the fact that this is a first book in the series and so the author may be trying to set us up for the future books, but this book has a dizzying array of characters, most of whom had nothing to do with pushing the plot forward. Roxy has the morals of an alley cat…which if written a little differently, could have been funny or even endearing. I realize that Ms Martin may have wanted to point out the fact that men having many one night stands can be an acceptable thing so a woman should be able to do the same thing without consequences, but Roxy keeps souvenirs from her one hour stands and unfortunately she just came off as being cheap. Even learning of her difficult childhood couldn’t seem to redeem Roxy in my mind. Since Roxy has a teenaged daughter, you might have thought the author may have taken a slightly different tack, but then again once you meet the daughter you see why the author chose to go the way she did. The daughter is quite obnoxious, but I assume that is typical bad girl teenage attitude. The story could have been interesting and even very funny if it hadn’t been flawed from the very start. On the very first page we meet Julius Hyde; the now deceased millionaire and his lover Kaylee. His wife walks in on one of their trysts and sets fire to the mansion to the tune of 85 million dollars in insurance money. Now I know things work a tad differently for the rich, but apparently unless I’ve misread something, Mrs. Hyde never even gets charged with arson. I can allow myself to suspend my disbelief for many things, but that just made me try to stretch a bit too far and I couldn’t do it.Don’t get me wrong, this is not a horrible book. I can even see Roxy becoming quite endearing in future books, if the hints in this one run true. But I’m afraid that many won’t have that burning desire to see what happens to Roxy, Sage, Nooch, Flynn, Loretta and Zack. I’m also afraid that with today’s economy people are going to start being a little pickier with their book choices and may not want to take a chance on another confusing book like this. Good luck and good reading!