Zapped (Regan Reilly Mysteries, No. 11)

This was the first Carol Higgins Clark book that I have read and I'm afraid that it will be my last. Admittedly this book is a quick read so you don't waste too much time on it, but I suspect that it was very quickly written too.
The tone of the writing suggest a mildy talented teenager is writing the book. There are far too many characters who all seem to 'coincidentaly' wind up involved in the same farce. New York comes across as a small town, not a huge city!
The character names sometimes stretch the powers of belief - Mr Blankbucks and Huckleberry Darling??
Do yourself a favour and find something else to spend a couple of hours reading - even a local newspaper will have more entertainment value.

My friend bought me this book for my birthday knowing I liked mysteries (If you actually want to call this a mystery),therefore, I felt obligated to finish it even though I didn't like it 20 pages in. I've since made a vow to myself never to be this loyal to any friend. No friend is worth what I went through while reading this.
Ok, where to start? First of all, this is the only (and last) book I've ever read of this series or this author for that matter. Is it just me or is this the perfect, crime-solving couple that's better looking than you or I but not quite Brad and Angelina. They love each other soooooooooo much it makes me sick. I literally think the last words of the book are (You might not want to read the next line if you haven't read the book)
something like "I love you so much dear, what would I do without you?" and they all enjoy a good laugh like the last 9 seconds of your typical Scooby-Doo episode.
The main plot follows a derranged girl who picks up blonde guys, drugs them and brands "I am a snake" in their arm, all the while New York city is under a blackout, making things even more ridiculous. So "perfect-wife" gathers the usual suspects along the way so they can save this poor blonde-guy from being slighlty uncofortable for a little while. Invigorating. I wish I could give it 0 stars.
Do yourself a favor and don't read this book. Do your house a favor and don't bring this book inside of it.

If you love Mary Higgins Clark, don't make the mistake that I did and assume you'll enjoy Carol's writing as well. Her pathetic attempt to create characters and write prose as brilliantly as her mother does isn't worth the paper on which it's printed. My guess is that the publishers are doing her mother a favor by publishing these dull, sophomoric works. The writing on the level of a clever high school student. There's so many uses of the passive voice that it could be a primer for bad writing. And the descrpiton of Regan and Nora are sorry attempts at describing herself and her mother. Don't buy these books if you like good writing.

This is bad writing. Being a New yorker myself, I had to walk home that day, so I was pretty disappointed about the inaccuracies in the plot. There was no way to call anyone on the phone that day. The only cell phone up was Verizon.
Anyway, the book is a complete waste of time; I was sick, so I had plenty of time to kill, otherwise I wouldn't have waisted a single minute on it. I hope that this 'writer' gets a different job.

Zapped is a huge let down. I was looking forward to this latest installment. It is a very quick read, but there are very few suprises here. One of the story lines revolves around getting very personal letters back that haven't been mailed yet. The person is afraid someone would open them. That is completely illegal and most people know this. To base a major part of the story on this premise is hardly believable. What a total disappointment!

Having a thing for a good series, I looked forward to reading Carol Higgins Clark's mystery Zapped.
A mystery - and that's where everything starts: To me, a mystery shouldn't give away the all so important `whodunit' question after the first thirty pages. Besides that, Zapped has a few other flaws I can't ignore:
Clark's often colorful, but believable characters are way over the top.
Just one example: An aspiring actress, whose obnoxious behavior makes Paris Hilton look like Miss Congeniality, needs to break into her (owned by her soon to be ex-husband's) apartment to retrieve some nasty letters she'd written as therapy. Frantically she tries to recover those letters, which are written to people she despises, before someone finds them and ruins her career by sending them off.
Unfortunately for her the airline she used for her trip back from Europe lost her luggage, including her shoes.
The story is trying to convince me that in a city like New York, a woman can't possibly round up some sort of footwear after hours, and therefore is forced to be carried by her co-conspirator after she broke a heel of her pumps. Needless to say the actress, Lorraine Lily, nags and nags and nags some more.

The story grows flatter as I turn the pages. It just seems much too convenient that half of the cast knows each other and that doesn't leave any room for suspense or any unforeseen twists, which makes the continuance of the story predictable. But what drove me over the edge was how the female predator, an ominous gal named Georgina, uses her weapon on her victims. If I may, I'd like to quote from page 206:
"Georgina was heating up the branding iron with her lighter. The black metal was getting hotter and hotter. I'd have made a great girl scout, she thought, glancing at the words on the brand - I AM A SNAKE."
Psychologically damaged, thanks to her cheating ex-boyfriend, Georgina uses a branding iron to brand her victims. Okay - let's just pretend it's believable that a cheating boyfriend in college can drive a woman to such measures later in life; she drugs guys who resemble her ex and then the story really gets ridiculous: Georgina uses a cigarette lighter to heat up a piece of metal not only large enough to spell out an entire sentence, but also HOT enough to brand this sentence permanently into her victim's flesh.

Truthfully, I have to cut Clark some slack because I very much enjoyed some of her other work, but I'm not sure what happened when she wrote Zapped. Despite the fact that the dialogue was boring, most of the characters unreal, and the plot hair-raisingly silly, I still give it three stars because Clark took me on a very descriptive journey through the dark streets of New York City during a black-out. Also, I liked the way she arranged the timeline in short and snappy chapters.

On a personal note; though a mystery is fiction, believability is a huge issue for me and Zapped clearly lacked believability right from the start.
And by the way: girl scouts don't use lighters.
Rebecca Lerwill, author of [[ASIN:1933538872 Relocating Mia]]

I'm a fan of this series and look forward to a nice cozy when the newest Regan books come out. They're usually funny whodunits; this one wasn't either. I felt like it spent more time on all of the different "bad guy" plots than on the main characters. It just didn't live up to the other Regan books at all.

Had there been a choice for zero stars, I would have chosen that. This book is awful!! Just awful!!! I don't understand how Carol Higgins Clark can go from entertaining to boring and silly. This book reminds me of stories writtem by the 5th graders I used to teach. Did anyone at Scribner proofread this book before sending it to print? Can Carol take Kit out of the desperate, pitiful best friend of Regan and give her some type of dignity? This book is the same song different verse. How many verses are there to this song? Do yourself a favor and buy one of her mother's books.

Carol Higgins Clark has written another fun book in her Regan Reilly series, one which was hard to put down but very quick to finish. As usual there are no really serious crimes in this book and no really heinous criminals. All is basically well that ends well, and it does. I found myself feeling quite sorry for Georgina, who had a really bad life. I hope she got the therapy she desperately needed. And I wondered why Lillian didn't even think about picking up the phone, calling Regan, and asking about the letters instead of trying to do things the hard way.

I have no real complaints about this book, but I missed Regan's parents. I hope to see more of them in the next book.

For a fun read on an airplane, on a long car ride (please, not if you're the driver!!!), or on a night before the television programs delayed by the writers' strike come back on, get this book. You will enjoy it.

It's obvious the author doesn't read these reviews as she does nothing to make change. I don't have a problem with the things most people have complained about. CHC writes cozys, fluff, not great mysteries. Once you accept that, these stories become acceptable. I listen to the audio tapes in the car as I don't have the time to sit & read. This brings me to my problem with CHC. For heaven sake STOP READING THEM YOURSELF. You have an irritating voice, you can't do accents & you read as if you were talking to five year olds. You may be an "actress" but, that doesn't mean you're good at audio narration. I didn't enjoy MHC's books when the author or CHC read them as much as when someone else read them. So, stop talking, spend the money & hire a professional. I would have rated this higher but her voice & is so off putting I find it hard to enjoy the story. This will probably be my last purchase of a CHC book.