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Cozy

Review

What He Left Behind

by Danise Hoover

Oak Hill, NC is a town where nothing much in the way of crime happens. Then, in the space of a few days, there is murder, robbery, and arson. Jacob Sawyer, someone who hasn’t been seen for 15 years, is back in town, though no one thinks he is the cause. Grace Bingham, local police detective and Jacob’s abandoned love interest from before, is under time pressure to solve the crimes without offending anyone important. Jacob’s back because his mother, beloved in the town, is dying of cancer; Calvin Dockery, an extremely wealthy local who pulls all the strings, is also dying. The current crimes harken to unexplained events of the past that caused Jacob to leave. The story moves from the present to the past and back again, gradually revealing what happened. Grace and Jacob are undeterred in their search to connect what is happening now with what happened in the past regardless of who is involved. Money is power, and power is very dangerous here, and those with it are willing to spare no one. Resolution is not easy, but very satisfying in a book with a great deal of atmosphere and local resonance.

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Review

Making Friends Can Be Murder

by Danise Hoover

We start this complicated plot with a clever ongoing fraud scheme in which a woman assumes the same name as another with a common name and a trust fund in order to steal the money. In Minneapolis, Sarah Jones has become part of a project of a Catholic highschooler doing penance for bad behavior, bringing together a bunch of women with this same name for regular coffee and conversation, making it ripe for this fraud. To avoid confusion, each member is identified by age rather than name. Thirty is our heroine; twenty-seven the thief. Added into the mix is a freshly minted FBI agent with his own secret agenda (not nefarious) and a cloistered nun with an unexpected background. A Sarah Jones, not part of the group, is found murdered, taking the fraud investigation to a new level. We have time spent in the woods, old crimes to solve, family connections, and a spot of romance. Confused? Don’t be. The story maintains its integrity and is enjoyable to the end with an interesting set of characters poised for what could be another book in the future.

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Review

Widows and Orphans

by Henrietta Thornton

Humor, up-to-the-minute political clashes, and more humor meet in this cozy-adjacent small-town mystery. Our protagonist, Canadian journalist Cat Conway, has had it with the wellness industry, especially its craven criticism of vaccines. Her series of articles on the anti-vax movement has made her a target of right-wingers, and scared advertisers could be the kiss of death for the Quill and Packet—the struggling Port Ellis newspaper Cat works for. Still, when the industry comes to town in the form of the Welcome, Goddess event, at which insufferable influencers Bree and Bliss bring their crystals, navel-gazing, and clothes in colors like oatmeal and wheat, Cat doesn’t shy from covering it. She aims to buttonhole the two about why they’re peddling harmful advice, but plans are derailed in favor of a murder investigation when one of the influencers is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Finding out who did it brings us into the underbelly of the wellness industry, which is perfectly and hilariously lampooned here, but also invites readers into Cat’s thorny but loving relationship with her wellness-guru mother and an enjoyable will-they-won’t-they romance with her coworker Amir. While this can stand alone, readers will want to go back to series debut Bury the Lead to spend more time with this gutsy journalist.

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Review

Picking Up the Pieces

by Henrietta Thornton

The South Island Jigsaw Crew has a fun remit: to test-drive the Cedar Bay Puzzle Company’s creations before they’re approved, making sure they work and critiquing visual design. Well, that’s what they usually do, but now the Washington State group has a new, more urgent project: to figure out who really killed a local woman, so that librarian Jim Chambers, father of our determined protagonist, Katie Chambers, can be freed. This series debut sees Katie plunge deeper and deeper into danger as she becomes the target of a mysterious figure who warns her to quit the case or else, and readers will be gratified by the cozy fiction staple of friends and other locals coming to her aid. A bonus is steadfast firefighter ex-boyfriend Connor, who wants to be back in the picture and whose loyalty keeps stubborn Katie safe even as she pushes him away. Tidbits about jigsaw-puzzle creation add to the fast-moving story, and with its exciting ending, it’s a great choice for both cozy fans and readers of other mysteries, and of course puzzle lovers.

J.B. Abbott is a pseudonym for firstCLUE Contributing Editor Jeff Ayers, author of Leave No Trace and Cold Burn; and author Brian Tracey.

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Review

Murder Runs in the Family

by Danise Hoover

As Amber approaches a luxury Arizona retirement community, she is truly at the end of her possibilities. All her worldly goods are in her backpack, she’s coming off a really bad breakup, and i
she’s looking to mooch off a grandmother she has never met. Amber’s mother has essentially blackballed grandma, but as mom is eternally disappointed in Amber, the young woman hopes to make a connection with her grandma. And oh my, does she! Grandma Judith, now known as Jade, is the glamorous leader of a crime-podcasting pack of residents. The physical resemblance is striking, and as Amber has been working for three years with her PI boyfriend, Bones, hoping to qualify for her own license, so is the subject expertise. The night she arrives, one of the podcast members dies under suspicious circumstances in the studio, and all are suspects. In order to earn her keep, Amber searches for information and for the dead man’s missing tortoise. Then an ex-boyfriend shows up, Jade is arrested, and it is up to Amber to figure things out with the help of a temporarily disabled veterinarian and a nurse. People are not who they seem, a major clue is concealed in the most unlikely place, and above all, Amber grows up and comes to terms with herself and her family. There are good characters here, and an insightful look at senior living.

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Review

A Case of Mice and Murder

by Brian Kenney

Attention anglophiles, lovers of dazzling historical fiction, and fans of a good draught of droll humor. This book is for you. Set in the Inner Temple, the heart of legal London for centuries, with its own degree of independence (not unlike the Vatican), the novel features Gabriel Ward KC, a brilliant legal mind who moves each day at the same measured pace between his chambers, which are crammed with books on nearly all topics; his office; and the dining hall. But on May 21, 1901, he emerges from his room only to discover a body on his doorstep. In fact, Ward is quick to identify it as the corpse of the Lord Chief Justice, who now has a Temple carving knife in his chest. But what is even more shocking isn’t that he is clad in evening wear, but that his feet are bare. How delicious is this plot? Appointed by the Temple’s Treasurer to investigate the murderer, Ward is paired with the eager and charming young Constable Wright, whose street knowledge turns out to be quite an asset, gaining Ward’s respect. The investigation drags the pair from the upper classes to the homeless, with an entirely separate court case—in children’s publishing, no less—providing some entertainment of its own. Quite simply, this is one of the very best debuts I’ve read in a long time; it’s sure to delight the Osman and Thorogood crews and readers of Sarah Caldwell’s legal murder mysteries as well.

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Review

All the Words We Know

by Brian Kenney

Nash offers the wonderfully unique perspective of 80-something Rose, who has dementia yet wrestles for clarity as she careens around her senior care home. Words and people are fluid in Rose’s mind. Incontinence pants become incongruence pads. Care Manager becomes Scare Manager. Management provides lengthy presentations, discussing “Duty of Care” and “Best Practice.” Then he uses the terms “Person Centered,” and “Facilitating a Holistic Therapeutic Environment.” Rose is adept at identifying lies, and liars, and she keeps returning to the room where her friend lived before she was found dead after a fall—or was it really a push out of the window? This sets Rose off on an investigation that annoys the staff and upsets her children, who only wish that their mother were more docile. Instead, she fears the Angry Nurse, who enters her room carrying a pillow…for smothering? As the book draws to a close, we see many of Rose’s deepest fears being exposed, as police cars surround the building, escorting some of the staff away. Could Rose’s campaign have finally freed the patients?

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Review

A Murder for Miss Hortense

by Henrietta Thornton

If you’re hankering for bulla cake, coco fritters, gizadas, or other Caribbean foods, Miss Hortense has you covered, with recipes for those dishes and more provided throughout this introduction to the steely “pardner lady.” Readers can learn the ins and outs of the pardner while meeting Hortense’s frenemies and neighbors—who are mostly one and the same—in millennium London and flashbacks to the city in the 1960s, but the basic premise is that it’s the kind of money club often used by those who are unbanked. English banks won’t let Hortense and other members of her Black community have accounts, so the pardner sees them each contribute money every week, with members taking turns to get the whole pot. Over the years, the club has allowed its contributors to “become the person they wrote back home and boasted that they were.” But now all the funds have disappeared at the same time that there are several deaths in the community. Even the supposedly natural demises get Hortense thinking, but some of the deaths bear the hallmarks of attacks that happened years ago, when a man the community called the brute beat several women to death and left biblical messages with their bodies. Is he back? Hortense and the other pardner members will have to do their “Looking into Bones,” which is what they call their investigations. These have the habit of “creating more dots than perhaps connections,” but allow readers to explore a tangle of love, loathing, and buried secrets that leads to a delightful Christie-like ending in which fingers are pointed and confessions made. Zadie Smith fans should pick up this winner.

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Review

The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective

by Brian Kenney

With its seven eccentric residents, charming historic bungalows, and a beautiful Santa Barbara setting just minutes from the beach, this novel will remind readers of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of a City series, although the latter lacks a mystery element. But they do both share an aging, somewhat hippy matriarch who owns and governs her own complex, and Mrs. B., the landlady of the Santa Barbara Marigold Cottages, only rents to those who need a leg up. Mrs. B.’s latest acquisition is Anthony, a reserved hulk with a prison background and the tats to prove it. Anthony makes the other tenants anxious, and when a dead body is found on the grounds of the cottages, the tenants, with the exception of Mrs. B, all point to Anthony. But Mrs. B. remains certain of his innocence, and heads down to the police station to turn herself in. Wonderfully eccentric with deep dives into many of the characters’ lives, this quickly paced read provides the perfect summer mystery.

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Review

10 Marchfield Square

by Brian Kenney

Yes, the comparison to Only Murders in the Building is inevitable (as it is to The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective, above, not to mention The Thursday Murder Club). All are narratives of place, in which the residents of a building, or buildings, are deeply involved in the story as amateur detectives, suspects, or both. Marchfield Square inhabits the smallest block of squares in London, with many of the units—Rear Window-like—facing internally, providing residents with a great deal of information about one another, but with little opportunity for actual conversation, at least without hollering across the courtyard. Remarkably, the elderly heiress who owns the complex, Celeste van Duren, is not just still alive, but actively engaged in running it. So when one of the residents is murdered (he totally deserved it), Celeste appoints two of the tenants—Audrey, a young woman who works as Celeste’s cleaner, and Lewis, a somewhat failed novelist—to a team responsible for investigating the murder. Because as we all know, the real police can’t be trusted to do anything right. Audrey and Lewis have to work out their own difficulties, but eventually the two are seen together snooping about the Square tracking the activities of their neighbors and friends. And guess what? Everyone has something to hide. This is loaded with humor and packed with punch, and cozy readers will be sure to keep a look out for more from this Audrey/Lewis duo.

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