Pg. 69: N.M. Kelby's "Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: N.M. Kelby's Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill.

About the book, from the publisher:

Take a slasher-movie actress, a Scottish circus clown, an FBI school dropout, a blind heiress, a junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and a Buddha-quoting bluesman, add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill.

N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People, and the Atlantic Monthly. Carl Hiaasen has called her “a natural-born writer,” and Kirkus praised her “black humor that sizzles.” Sit back, put up your feet, and get ready to lose yourself in a rollicking good story.

Among the praise for the book:

“A Hiaassen-esque mystery in Florida, where a couple of deaths at a retirement community are anything but natural. Mix in a campy slasher film actress, Barry Manilow impersonator and his pet pooch Mandy and a Baptist-turned-Buddhist blues singer and you get a perfect beach read.”
—New York Post

“With Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill, N. M. Kelby joins that elite group of crime fiction writers such as Carl Hiaasen who toil in absurdist humor and outlandish situations …. Kelby skillfully mixes magic realism into a sharply honed story that also includes a bit of philosophy about greed and Florida.”
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“N.M. Kelby's Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill is a worthy addition to the pantheon of over-the-top Florida crime novels …. N.M. Kelby writes beautifully. Her characters are unforgettable, and her use of oddball details adds to the particular flavor of the story, which has moments of melancholy and tenderness among the fireworks.”
—The Capital Times

“Laguna Key, the fictional setting of N.M. Kelby's new novel, lies somewhere between Carl Hiaasen's Miami, Jimmy Buffett's Key West and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Aracataca. Kelby's brand of Sunshine State satire has a gentle, even enchanted touch …. It's the Florida we wish we lived in.”
—St. Petersburg Times

“Just as she did in the magical Whale Season, Kelby has created a Florida that is dreamy and endearing, a place filled with wondrous characters–women who might be mermaids and men who might be angels. I want to go live there. And I want to be a Bad Girl.”
—Bob Morris, author of Bahamarama

Read an excerpt from Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, and learn more about the author and her work at N.M. Kleby's website and blog.

N.M. Kelby is the author of Whale Season, In the Company of Angels, Theater of the Stars, and the Campaign for the American Reader's entry on The Great Florida Novel.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill.

--Marshal Zeringue