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Kill the Competition (a humorous romantic mystery) by [Stephanie Bond]

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Stephanie Bond

Kill the Competition (a humorous romantic mystery) Kindle Edition

by Stephanie Bond (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

454 ratings

Part of: a humorous romantic mystery (5 books)

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There’s only one sure way to get to the top: Kill the competition.

Belinda Hennessey moved to Atlanta to start over from a disastrous relationship. She’d dreamed of a glamorous life and successful career…instead, her love life is nonexistent, her accounting job for a furniture company is uninspiring, and the only way she can deal with the seething traffic is to join a carpool with three female coworkers. But on her first day driving carpool, Belinda rear ends a cop…and her day continues to slide when she learns the woman she replaced in the carpool died after falling down an elevator shaft at their office building.

The women in her carpool have widely different personalities: a big-haired southern woman with a noisy family and a shopping habit, a young mailroom employee married to a guy who needs a green card, and a widow who’s secretive about why she has to skip the carpool on certain days. One thing they all agree on: Their boss Margo is a tyrant.

So when Margo cozies up to Belinda, she smells a setup. And Belinda starts to wonder if maybe the dead woman knew something about the business that got her killed. At least things are heating up between her and the cop she rammed—a relationship that comes in handy when Belinda finds a body in the trunk of her car. When she’d moved to the big city, this wasn’t the kind of headline she’d been hoping to make!

Reviews:

"With a fast pace that moves the story along and smart snappy dialog between the characters, Ms Bond has penned another fascinating read that will leave her readers wanting more from this talented and imaginative author." --A Romance Review

"Stephanie Bond is in her usual rare form, and that form is utterly delightful. KILL THE COMPETITION is an excellent, fast-paced, sexy story. Ms. Bond's talent for creating characters is superb, and you feel like you know them personally. Her narrative is so descriptive that I smelled the exhaust fumes along the Georia 400 and I-85 to downtown Atlanta. All in all this was a fun read." --AOL Romance Fiction

"Whatever kind of book you want, you will probably find it in KILL THE COMPETITION. Laughter, suspense, passion, and female bonding all combine in this realistically complex and sometimes whacky book. Ms. Bond has created magic, and she pulls more than one rabbit out of the hat to surprise her readers." --Academic Planet

"With such an omimous title as KILL THE COMPETITION, readers probably expect plenty of suspense and tense drama. But Ms. Bond skillfully manages to infuse the serious business of murder with enough charm, romance, and humor to give the story a fun, light-hearted feeling." --Romance Reviews Today

"DO read this novel." Publishers Weekly

Print length

330 pages
Language

English
Publication date

October 27, 2011
File size

1013 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stephanie Bond walked away from a corporate computer programming career to write fiction full-time. To date, Bond has written over 60 romance and mystery novels. She lives in midtown Atlanta. For more information, see Stephanie Bond's Amazon author page.

From Publishers Weekly

Despite its title and blood-red cover art, this tart, down-to-earth tale from Bond (I Think I Love You, etc.) focuses more on the nature of female friendships than on the murder mystery that throws the heroine's life into a tailspin. New to Atlanta, finance specialist Belinda Hennessey is glad to have her carpool mates to take her mind off her failed marriage. Before she can get too comfortable, however, she hits Officer Wade Alexander's police cruiser, misses a crucial meeting and clashes with her malevolent boss, Margo, who wants her to overlook the fact that the company they're merging with may have fudged its numbers. Belinda reluctantly agrees and then finds herself in hot water when Margo turns up dead. Though at times too gullible for her own good, Belinda comes into her own over the course of the novel. Her uncertainties about her job, her zany friends and her budding relationship with Wade are ably portrayed, as is the setting (Bond describes Atlanta's traffic as only a resident could). Clever snippets from the carpool quartet's work-in-progress, a relationship dos and don'ts book for women ("DON'T underestimate the extent to which men underestimate women"), leaven the story, as does the women's banter. Readers who prefer heady sex and romance won't find either here, but for those who appreciate fun, classy, relationship-centered tales: DO read this novel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0060E7MSS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ NeedtoRead Books (October 27, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 27, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1013 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 330 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #332,200 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10,353 in Women Sleuths (Kindle Store)
- #13,529 in Romantic Comedy (Kindle Store)
- #15,698 in Romantic Suspense (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
454 ratings

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About the author

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Stephanie Bond

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Stephanie Bond was several years into a corporate computer programming career when an instructor in her evening MBA program remarked she had a flair for writing and encouraged her to submit a project to academic journals. Stephanie adds, "But instantly I thought 'I wonder if I could write a romance novel?' "

She spent every spare moment the next couple of years writing and submitting manuscripts before selling her romantic comedy IRRESISTIBLE? to Harlequin Enterprises. After selling ten projects, Stephanie walked away from her corporate career to write commercial fiction full time. To date, she's published over 100 romance and mystery projects with Harlequin, Random House, St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins, and more recently, under her own imprint.

Stephanie's independently published romantic comedy STOP THE WEDDING!, a Kindle bestseller in three languages, is now a Hallmark Channel movie! Check local TV/DVR guides for encore airings.

Stephanie lives in midtown Atlanta and is probably working on a story at this very moment. Be sure to Follow Stephanie on Amazon to receive notifications when she releases a new book!

Customer reviews

5 star		62%
4 star		27%
3 star		7%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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TBreakiron

Another great and entertaining mystery.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 11, 2012

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When the book starts up you meet Belinda who has recently moved to Atlanta and who has recently joined a carpool with three other women from her office. Part of the reason the women carpool together is because they live outside of the perimeter of the city and traffic is usually a nightmare trying to drive into work. She's been able to join the carpool because a woman that was once a part of it died a few months before from an accident involving an elevator at work. During the drive all of the women like listening to a particular radio station because the man who does the traffic report has quite a sexy voice. In fact he ends up reporting the very accident Belinda gets herself into when she runs into the back of the police car in front of her. From there she meets the very handsome cop who is quite irritated and she ends up with three tickets from the adventure that morning and ends up missing a very important meeting she was supposed to have been in that morning.
When she ends up having a very public argument with her boss that really should have gotten her fired, instead the woman promises her a job promotion which would be giving her quite a hefty raise which is unusual in the economy. She keeps that news to herself meanwhile all the while continuing to go on her carpool as usual as well as some concerns about some of the numbers that don't ad up quite as well as they should on some financial papers. The dreaded employee evaluations are coming up and everyone's nervous. Belinda goes into her evaluation and things pretty much go about as well as she hoped. She's not sure how much longer she can keep it from everyone but she has two weeks to think about it as Margo is finally going on that vacation to Hawaii that had previously been postponed.
After getting her car back from being repaired Belinda is incredibly shocked to discover something shocking in the trunk. The rest of the story is solving the mystery of what's found in her trunk and whether it has anything to do with what happened to the last person that had her position in the company. Meanwhile she finds herself with the potential for romance with the cop and the air traffic reporter.
A subplot of the book is concerning what is actually in an envelope that she receives from her husband who after the ceremony couldn't bring himself to sign the marriage certificate. Part of the reason why she moved to Atlanta to get away from her failed marriage back home and give herself a chance for a fresh start. Throughout the course of the book we find her picking up the envelope and your curiousity builds about what exactly is contained inside. You do get an answer to that question at the very end of the book in a special epilogue.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2012

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Belinda is running from a nightmare of a white wedding. Having the groom go through the motions and then not sign the paperwork...leaving you with a lot of unanswered questions...Most women I know would want a fresh start where questions about the past can be avoided.

As she eases into her new job with a BigWitch of a boss and a commute through the worst commuter traffic in the southeast. She joins a car pool with three women who are wild characters. One is absessed with shopping and is fighting for the life of her Bloomie's credit card. Husband has the scissors at hand and is ready to shread their debt. Another is making money on the side by helping foreign men obtain their green cards. They live with her and she gets a lump sum when their paperwork is complete. Finally, there is the mysterious woman who is taking a lot of medications and disappears weekly for a reason she won't talk about.

Add in the interesting men. The stalker neighbor...The traffic reported with the sexy voice who just happens to use the gym in the women's building...The 'goodbody' policeman who they meet in a shocking way on Belinda's first day driving car pool.

Putting all these folks together would be a start for fireworks and interesting romantic possibilities...then comes the day Belinda decides to take her wedding momentos to Goodwill and finds one of her new Atlanta 'friends' taking up trunk space and not saying much.

Now we are in a race against the cops to prove Belinda didn't put her friend in the trunk and find out who she can trust.

One person found this helpful

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Cici

Yilk! I really liked this book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2012

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I started reading this almost as soon as I downloaded it, because the references to the Atlanta traffic being incorporated in the story caught my attention. I'm one of the millions who have tried to navigate through or around Atlanta, praying all the way that we would arrive safely, and on the same day we started through town. The carpool in the traffic was a great way to introduce the characters, and set up the plot lines. As another reviewer said, I think I know someone like all the people in this book, so I felt I was in familiar surroundings throughout.

By the half way point in the book, I was still trying to guess what was going to happen next, and I don't think I guessed right even once! That kept the book intensely interesting, and me very anxious to see what direction the author was going to take next.

No spoilers from me - you will enjoy finding out the twists and turns at the pace the author set. But I will say a big THANK YOU to her editor and the others who prompted Ms. Bond to write the epilogue. As the story wrapped up. my mind was screaming for the answer that was finally provided in the epilogue. Don't skip ahead - you will get the answers when it is time to. The only question I have left is - where did the expression "Yilk" come from? I'm guessing it is a form of 'Yikes' but a new one to me.

Another author I'm adding to my "Read more from ..." list! Loved this book

One person found this helpful

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Nicola MansfieldTop Contributor: DC Comics

it was a lot of fun I really enjoyed them all

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 30, 2016

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This book is pure and simple fluff but I admit I had a ball with it. Chick Lit with capital letters, this is not my typical type of read. I was attracted to the southern setting, Atlanta Georgia, and the fact that it was labelled "romantic mystery". The mystery isn't much but it does keep you guessing and surprise you because everybody has secrets that don't get told until the very end. Mostly, though this is a character book. Typical southern fiction with the quirky characters. The book revolves around Belinda and the three women she carpools to work with every day. it was a lot of fun I really enjoyed them all. Yes, it is a romance but it's pretty light and both guys she liked had their moments for me. An all around fun, light read!

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Top reviews from other countries

Lynda Kelly

Ignore The Errors And Enjoy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 1, 2012

Verified Purchase

This author has written a lot of books but this was the first I have read. I think this one was great. I really enjoyed it. It's about a bunch of four different women carpooling who all work in a furniture store in Atlanta.
She does use a word that annoyed me quite a lot-yilk........I've not heard of that before but it jarred on me each time I saw it ! There were also a few crashing spelling errors which I was shocked to see as surely an editor has been employed. Hook for book/budding for building/minors for mirrors being a few. Not good and let it down.
There were some great laugh out loud moments-most for me involved her relationship with her cat Downey. I'd recommend it but just ignore the errors.
She had a clever idea with the epilogue and I liked that. I also like what she wrote at the end as it's so true these days. "I know you have a lot of entertainment choices at your fingertips, so I'm thrilled you chose to spend a few hours with my story"......nice touch I thought.

Spirit of Karate

Good read; maintains the mystery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 2, 2012

Verified Purchase

I read the book while I was on holiday and was pleased that it kept me entertained. It's a relatively light read, no need to get the synapses sparking too much, however it does actually manage to keep up the mystery until the perpetrator is revealed.

I felt that the author had a real feel for her characters and managed to show the main people as likable but also still flawed, as real humans are. It was nice to see that it wasn't all cutesy.

On the back of this book I have gone and bought some more books from this author and would definitely recommend that you give her a try if you are into these kind of genres - and definitely a great read for sitting out on the terrace enjoying the summer evenings.

One person found this helpful

Anne

Great read - a 'can't put downer'1

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 17, 2012

Verified Purchase

Never read this author before. In fact, my usual reads are more in the serious murder investigation department. I wanted to give this a try for a bit of a change and was very happily surprised that I could enjoy the humour along with a decent murder to boot! The couple of bits of passionate encounter went down quite well too! Good strong story and I didn't even manage to figure out 'who dunnit' before the end.
I felt very comfortable with the characters and their descriptions were great - enough info to feel you kind of know them without going into that much that you end up getting bored!
Will be reading more by this author again I'm sure!

Avid reader

A really fab read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 2, 2012

Verified Purchase

A jilted woman moves into a new town and becomes part of a car-pool. As the women begin to grow closer, so they are framed for murder.
A murder- mystery book for women which combines the story of a woman beginning to trust with a good who-dunnit!!!
Easy to read and good solid plot made it a definate winner!!

2 people found this helpful

janey74

Intriguing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 3, 2012

Verified Purchase

A humorous romantic mystery which was easy to follow. This was my first novel by Stephanie and I also got this free, in fact all her books I have got while on offer which I think is good to promote them as I then pass on recommendations to others. Good story and I couldnt guess the ending.

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