Moseley was born in Oklahoma, reared in Texas and seasoned in Arkansas. She paid her writing dues on newspapers, television, and ad agencies before beginning her novelist career at age 50. Her first novel, "Bonita Faye," was a 1996 finalist in the Edgar Allen Poe awards sponsored by Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel by an American Writer.
Readers of "Bonita Faye" will be happy to know, Moseley has proven herself with a second novel as rich in characterization, plot, and humor as her first. "The Fourth Steven," is a mystery as engaging as it is suspenseful.
Honey Huckleberry is a protagonist full of humor, faults, and zany quirks. Readers will take her to their hearts and want to protect her from the perilous adventures she walks into as innocently as an angel unaware.
Honey is a 28-year-old book representative for a few select publishers, she is or has been a loner for more than ten years. The only child of parents who died within a day of each other when she was but 18 years old, Honey has made her way alone and enjoys her solitary life. She continues to live in the three story Victorian home left to her by her parents. This stubborn redhead refused to sell her property to Dr. Ralph Ketchum who purchased the other homes on her block for his modernistic clinic. Why wouldn't she sell her home? Easy, her father who had retired from the business world before Honey was born, told her to keep the house because it would look after her. It takes Honey a long time to figure out just how a house can look after a person.
Moseley presents Honey Huckleberry's story in first person. This gives it an aura of reality hard to resist.
"I knew three Stevens. But I'd never thought of it that way . . .
"There was Steven Miller who ran the Texaco station. Steven Bondesky, the accountant. Steven Hyatt, the Hollywood director . . . "But there was one more the one who called on the phone, the one who said his name was Steven, the one who confessed to murder . . ."
Honey knew none of her Stevens would ever commit murder. Whoever this caller was, he definitely was not one of her Stevens. Another major puzzle presented itself when the fourth Steven played a poetry game with her on the phone that only her old highschool friend Steven Hyatt knew about. Since Hyatt was in Australia on a film location, it couldn't be he, so who is this man and why has he called her to confess a murder?
The plot thickens as Honey tries to unravel the identity of this caller. Then, when Steven Miller is murdered in Honey's living room while she is away on a business trip, the story picks up all the dangers of a Texas tornado.
The players in this mysterious tale are so well drawn they become instant friends. One of my favorites was the slightly crazed owner of Pages Bookstore Janie Bridges. She is a mystery buff and adds not only real clues to help Honey, but enough laughs to shame a barrel of monkeys. Detective Silas Sampson is a tad gullible and easy for Honey to lie to about all the calls from the
fourth Steven, but Detective Lennox is another matter, no lies, no way, for this serious investigator. Bondesky, Hyatt, Joaquin Verde, the gardener, Harry, the sometime lover, and all the rest become not characters, but people you care about. Heck, I even liked the stranger on the telephone.
It is important to remember to who and what Honey tells each of the parties involved. Also, be very careful how you read her descriptions of her home. It does hold a key and a couple of secrets that involve folks not only in Fort Worth, Texas, but in Italy as well.
Moseley's unique voice and style displayed in her first novel, are easily recognized in "The Fourth Steven." Nothing is ever as you think it is, but the ebb and flow of just the right words for every scene, makes for an easy and delightful read.
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(Jones is a published writer and literary critic)
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