Frances Metzman

Reviews

The cha cha babes dance with the devil novel by frances metzman

The Cha Cha Babes, Celia and Marcy, are back again in a riveting thriller! This time the baby
boomers and accidental sleuths have walked into the one of the most brutal Mafia enterprises –
sex trafficking. Worldwide, sex trafficking brings in an estimated $150 billion each year and it’s
growing. 

When Celia and Marcy are kidnapped, they’re forced to become madams/spies for their sex trade
prisoners. Managing to escape, they face hard decisions: Do they go back to life in their comfy
Florida retirement community? Or, do they take on their captors to find justice and freedom for
as many abused prisoners as they can. When they choose the treacherous path, they drag Allison,
Celia’s daughter, and Celia’s beau, Stanton, into the fray. Moving through a pot-holed, arduous
journey toward justice, Celia and Marcy find similar ways to preserve their sanity through their Cha Cha
rules and laughter. There are moments of blackhumor and slivers of pretense that everything will work out.
Yet, death threats loom large. Their maddening search reveals strengths, weaknesses, and how extreme
pressure impacts their personalities. Although they’ve chosen a noble crusade, they don’t know if they and
their families will live or die. 

Metzman’s fast-paced narrative sheds light on the sex trade industry and shows us how sex
trafficking thrives around the world. Celia and Marcy strive to become ingenious in their harsh
pursuit. Will they succeed?

The plot revs, tilts, bangs. There is gunfire. There is a car chase. There’s some fancy computer work and
Plan A and Plan B and hiding in small spaces and sneaking wires onto jackets. There is also the liberation of
the cha-cha —both the dancing lessons the ladies take and the rules they try to live by. Metzman supposes with
abandon, goes in for a few red herrings, and doesn’t shy away from financial forensics…The book is nearly
500 pages long, but you’ll finish it in a day. You’ll want to know if Celia wins the day — and if she’ll keep rocking
that thong

-The Philadelphia Inquirer

…a compelling and surprising whodunit whose plot likely won’t end up where readers expect.Metzman artfully constructs each character, giving them backstories full of regret and frustration that lend literary weight to their sometimes-comical present. A thoroughly entertaining, lighthearted murder mystery.

-Kirkus

With The Cha-Cha Babes Dance with the Devil, Fran Metzman combines twisted humor with real-world drama in a book that will unnerve, amuse, and inform. Highly recommended.

–Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of CAVE 13 and V-WARS. ALSO, NY Times Bestseller and 5-time Bram Stoker Award winner

Here are women to free and bastards to take down. Breathlessly paced, the novel’s surprising twists and turns make this an exhilarating read, as plucky Celia and her still-ready-for-the-fashion-runway pal push the Cha Cha “I’ll do it my way” code to the limit. This adventure tale may do more for awareness about one of the world’s truly insidious practices than a shelf of nonfiction books on the subject. Read it and look forward to the third Cha-Cha book in the series.

-Ned Bachus, author of City of Brotherly Love (winner, IPPY Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, 2013), Open Admissions (nonfiction, 2017), and Mortal Things (novel, 2022)
The cha cha babes of pelican way novel by frances metzman


Would you move a dead body for the sake of your best friend? Ask cha-cha babe Celia Ewing,
a sixty-five-year-old widow who has just settled into Boca Pelicano Palms, the Florida retirement
community of her dreams. When Celia’s best friend Marcy calls her and their friend Deb for help i
n the middle of the night, they find a naked Marcy trapped under the body of her beau, the community’s
board president, Melvin. And he’s dead. The three friends secretly move Melvin back to his apartment
setting off a chain of events that will threaten to tear their community apart and send them to jail.
Melvin is one of a number of residents who are dying under suspicious circumstances; and soon
Celia becomes an amateur sleuth in an attempt to identify what she suspects is a serial murderer.

Filled with humorous, witty observations about retirement communities, the realities of getting older,
and the promise of new love, the Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way celebrates the deep bonds of
female friendships, the desire for companionship at any age, and shows us that it’s never too late to
learn how to cha-cha through life.

The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way is a fast-paced romp of death, passion, and dark humor.
Way too damn much fun!

– Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author of Glimpse and V-Wars. ALSO, NY Times Bestseller and 5-time Bram Stoker Award winner.

… a compelling and surprising whodunit whose plot likely won’t end up where readers expect.
Metzman artfully constructs each character, giving them backstories full of regret and frustration
that lend literary weight to their sometimes-comical present. A thoroughly entertaining, lighthearted
murder mystery.

-Kirkus

The Cha-Cha babes of Pelican Way” is riveting! At times you will smile, at times you will cry but in the end
you will leave with a smile from side to side. Long live the Cha-Cha babes..

-The Daily Press

The Cha-Cha babes of Pelican Way” is one of these laugh-out-loud books that will make you take you on awhirlwind of emotion…

-The Baltimore Sun

The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way is ready to be next to the sun tan lotion and towel as it makes its way to the beach this summer. Before you know it, this novel will splash you deep in the water of an adventure as it will captivate all the senses of in your body leaving you begging for more.

-The Sun Sentinel


Metzman (The Hungry Heart, 2012) offers a mystery novel about a trio of women attempting to solve a string of murders in a Florida retirement
community for people 55 and older.

When 65-year-old Celia, a resident of Boca Pelicano Palms in Florida, gets a call in the middle of the night from her friend and neighbor Marcy, also 65, about a vaguely described “big problem,” she wakes their 69-year-old mutual friend Deb, and heads over to help. Celia would do anything for Marcy or Deb-they recently talked her out of a suicide attempt, after all-but she doesn’t yet realize how her loyalty will be tested. When Celia and Deb arrive at the office of Melvin Onstader, the retirement community’s board president, they discover a nude, struggling Marcy “prone on the desktop buried up to her neck under…Melvin’s overweight, blubbery frame.” In order to protect Marcy-who’s only one strike away from eviction-they smuggle Melvin’s body back to his apartment.

There, Celia discovers mysterious pills that point to foul play. Later, Melvin’s ex-wife, Edith, who succeeds him as board president, realizes something is amiss about his demise, and she blames Marcy. Then other community residents start dying under mysterious circumstances. Celia, widowed three years ago and only just coming into her own after a bad marriage and a lifetime of meekness, is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. However, she’ll have to keep it all a secret from her 33-year-old daughter, Allison, who’s just moved in with her after leaving her husband. Celia finds out that all the women around her need something, whether it’s a new man or a 50-year-old list of cha-cha dance rules.

Metzman writes with humor and a sharp eye for characterization, as when she describes how Deb’s “rheumatoid arthritis…affected every joint and muscle in her body, except for her acerbic tongue.” The book is a pleasing blend of camp and procedural mystery, playing up the geriatric nature of the setting while also taking the concerns and passions of Celia and her peers seriously. Overall, Metzman has crafted a compelling and surprising
whodunit whose plot likely won’t end up where readers expect. In the end, however, it’s largely a character-driven affair, and readers will enjoy the main trio’s moments of levity-as when they smoke marijuana in Marcy’s apartment or pick up men at Fritzy’s Rendezvous-as much as the twists of the investigation.

The author artfully constructs each of these characters, giving them backstories full of regret and frustration that lend literary weight to their sometimes-comical present. Celia moved to Florida to spend her golden years in paradise, but the author shows how it now provides her an opportunity to look back upon her entire life: to correct mistakes, recognize injustices, and forgive her younger self for not always having enough strength. It turns out that retirement provides plenty of opportunities to turn things around-and to solve a few murders as well. A thoroughly entertaining, lighthearted murder mystery.

By Beth Kephart
The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way
By Frances Metzman

I’ve been spending a lot of time at a retirement village lately. My father lives there. I love him. And so I go and meander about at his side – greeting the ladies (mostly the ladies) who sit on the shaded benches or down in the garden or by the window in the cafe. There are scooters, walkers, canes, and ambling feet. Stories passing by. I have not, to my knowledge, encountered cha-cha babes throughout my village jaunts, though you might talk to me, if you wish, about the line dancers. Philadelphia writer Frances Metzman, however, has encountered such figures – or at least she has in her imagination. She’s put the vision to fortitudinous use in her new fast-paced and psychedelically covered novel The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way. Sex. Murder. Serial murder. Embezzlement. More murder. Betrayal. More sex. Oh, and, yes, not just cha-cha but the rules of cha-cha, which include “don’t be afraid of resistance. It opens new horizons” and “judgments immobilize the mind. They limit freedom of choice.” It all goes down at the Florida retirement community where Celia Ewing, a 65-year-old widow who can pull off a cleavage-bearing outfit and thong to better effect than her daughter, has found herself caught up in a mystery that may cost her and her daughter their lives.

The curtain goes up on a frantic call in the middle of the night. Celia’s new friend Marcy is in a predicament. Marcy has been flattened, to be specific, by the hulking weight of her senior citizen boyfriend, who has died during their secret tryst. Another friend has been called in to consult. They do the only thing they can think to do, the only thing right-thinking people in such a predicament would, of course, do – swab the naked body, wrap it in blankets, and wheelchair it back to its bed. Then pretend nothing’s happened. You know – as well as they can.

The imbroglio involving Marcy’s secret lover is not the only weird stuff going on at Boca Pelicano Palms. The death rate among the “oldsters,” for example, is suspiciously high. So is the death rate among people associated with Global HMO’s Well Services, the caregiving organization with close ties to Pelicano. And what’s up with Deb, the third cha-cha babe, who’s losing parts of her mind at a precipitous rate? Finally, is Celia’s new lover (who also happens to be an old boyfriend) part of the good gang or the bad gang, to be trusted or to be denied? Finally, finally, will Celia’s mostly
estranged daughter, who has nevertheless moved in with Celia (and gotten a job, coincidentally, at Global HMO), learn to love Celia for who Celia has at long last become?

the hungry heart stories novel by fran metzman

THE HUNGRY HEART STORIES is a short story collection that deals with the universal search to fill
a void. Fran Metzman, co-author of UGLY COOKIES, serves up a plate of quirky and disparate characters
in these captivating stories.A grieving husband in the darkly funny “Right Seasoning” conjures up his
deceased wife’s presence in the beloved kitchen they once shared.From “My Inheritance” tells of a
grown daughter, trying to find the love and peace she has always craved with her dying mother to
“Getting Closer”, the story of a woman left with the violent legacy of food that defined her life – we find
the characters reaching the low points and triumphs of human emotions.Particularly poignant is the story,
“The Reunion”, about a woman born into poverty who reaches the pinnacle of success but with questionable sacrifice.
Each of the twelve stories and one essay incorporates food as a means to some end or fulfillment.

Fran Metzman’s short stories are a feast, dig in and devour them quickly. Story after story, they will tease your palate, fill you with emotion, and keep you longing for more. Each character comes alive. This is a beautifully written book.

-Gloria Mindock, Cervena Barva Press

In Fran Metzman’s collection THE HUNGRY HEART STORIES we meet mothers and daughters, lovers, career women,
wives and husbands, and feel that we know them all.

–Joy E. Stocke, founder & editor-in-chief of Wild River Review and author of A MEMOIR, ANATOLIAN NIGHTS DAYS & NIGHTS

THE HUNGRY HEART STORIES is an apt and striking title because it reveals what centers this short story collection
– the need for the heart to find sustenance and the gathering at a meal which is so often the intersection of our lives.
Metzman is a deft storyteller who gets into her characters to reveal them and tell us something about the world we live in.

-Peter Krok, author of LOOKING FOR AN EYE
ugly cookies novel by frances metzman

UGLY COOKIES, a mainstream romantic comedy, explores family relationships and how they affect love,
careers and marriage. Bridget Bernstein is a thirty-two year old social worker dominated by her mother,
a woman who has made a fortune selling ugly cookies. When Bridget breaks into her ex-boyfriend’s apartment,
a comedy of errors leads to disaster. The fall-out sends Bridget on a hilarious journey of self-discovery.
In her search for love and spirituality, she meets Carson McAlister, a conservative banker who has left his
midwestern roots. Their worlds collide, reshaping their lives in ways they never imagined.

A quirky mainstream comedy-clever and well-imagined.

-Diane McKinney-Whetstone, best-selling author of TUMBLING

These are the kind of heroes I want as friends – spunky, smart and socially conscious.

–Rachel Simon, author of THE MAGIC TOUCH and THE WRITER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE

UGLY COOKIES is a wildly funny tale of romantic and family entanglements..

–Gloria Hochman, co-author with Patty Duke of the New York Times Best Seller, A BRILLIANT MADNESS: Living with Manic Depression

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