Tag:

Crafts

Review

The Gardener’s Plot

by Brian Kenney

Any cozy reader will assure you that there are few places more dangerous than the community garden. And Maggie Walker—who helped create the garden in Marlowe, her small Berkshire town—is reminded of this fact when opening day arrives and she discovers a boot jutting out of the garden. Attached to a foot. Which is attached to a body. Yikes! To make matters worse, Violet, whose idea the garden was, has seemingly disappeared. Maggie has only recently returned to Marlowe, smarting after the death of her “not-quite ex-husband,” and taking over the home of her recently deceased grandmother. But one thing keeps happening after another, from threatening telephone calls to harassment from a cousin as Maggie tries to find out what happened to Violet. An engaging look at small town life and death, this book was the recipient of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of American First Crime Novel Award.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Puzzle Me a Murder

by Brian Kenney

Call me old-fashioned, but when I’m reading a cozy, I like a corpse to make an appearance in the first quarter of the book. Puzzle Me a Murder delivers not just a corpse, but the body of George Milliner, the husband of Ruby, who just happens to be best friends with Alice Pepper. And Alice is totally at the center of this book. Director of the local public library (job and library are portrayed 100 percent accurately), Alice rules from her huge, old Craftsman house, her settlement in the divorce, surrounded by friends and family. So when George is murdered—he was last seen in his house chasing a young, scantily clad, blonde-haired woman—Alice, Ruby, and others spring into action, and having a granddaughter on the police force certainly helps. While cooking, eating, and working on puzzles provide the crew with some down time, Alice and Ruby are more often out and about ferreting information to help determine George’s murderer. What they find is shocking: corruption in local government, blackmail from vendors, and the harassment of some of West Hazel, Oregon’s leading citizens. There’s a buoyancy to this book that makes it a delight to read, while still capturing the evil that dwells among us. I am so looking forward to another Alice adventure.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Board to Death

by Jeff Ayers

Ben Rosencrantz leaves his job as an English professor and returns home to Sugar House, a suburb of Salt Lake City, newly divorced from his husband and ready to help his ailing dad run the family’s game shop. The store is struggling financially, so Ben’s initially torn when Clive, a customer known for unscrupulous methods, offers a chance to buy a rare board game worth thousands of dollars. But when Ben tells the seller no thanks, Clive is livid. The next time Ben sees Clive is when his dead body lands on the store’s doorstep. Ben and Ezra, the cute florist from next door, decide to investigate on their own but quickly learn that the case is no game. Connor’s large and charming cast of characters is so engaging that the mystery, while fun to solve, is just icing on a multi-layer cake. Many cozy mysteries have recipes in the back of the book, but this one has rules for a fun game and questions for your next book club meeting. Whether you are a fan of LGBTQ fiction or not, this is a terrific debut.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Seams Deadly

by Brian Kenney

True confession: I can’t sew. Not to even to hem a pair of pants. But that hardly stopped me from enjoying Seams Deadly. After discovering her teaching assistant in bed with her boorish, snobbish husband—cheap, too, if he won’t rent a hotel room—middle-school teacher Lydia Barnes ups and moves from Atlanta to the mountain town of Peridot, Georgia. It’s very Mayberry RFD, with friendships and gossip galore. Lydia connects with her fellow sewists—in fact, she gets a job at the Measure Twice fabric store—and before you can say “zigzag stitch,” she’s set up on a date with her handsome neighbor and the town’s bookseller, Brandon Ivey. It’s one weird date, and Lydia’s comedic voice comes to the fore as she narrates the evening. But weird only gets weirder as later that night, she comes across Brandon dead as can be, with a pair of dress shears lodged deep into his neck. Ouch! Newcomer Lydia is the police’s number one suspect, and when another body is found, the cops are ready to lock her up. Lydia turns to the sewists to help get her out of this mess. If only it were that simple. Special mention goes to Baby Lobster, Lydia’s cat, for valor extraordinaire.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Jane Austen’s Lost Letters

by Brian Kenney

Here’s a conundrum. Series readers love returning to the familiar: the nosy next-door neighbor, the long-term fiancé, the super intelligent dachshund, and, above all else, our detective. At the same time, readers expect the newest book to shake things up, presenting our hero with changes and challenges. Authors looking to pull this off would do well to consult Jane Austen’s Lost Letters—the 14th book in the Josie Prescott series—a textbook on how to balance the old and the new. Josie, an extremely successful antiques dealer, meets an elegant older woman who presents her with a box, then disappears. The box, from Josie’s father, dead these twenty years, contains two of Jane Austen’s letters. The missives set off a series of events that pulls us into the worlds of academia, rare manuscripts, television production, historical-autograph authentication, and Josie’s relationship with her dad. At a point, the book shifts, and Josie is no longer just investigating, she’s fighting for her life. A traditional mystery with a soupçon of the thriller, this book will appeal to a large swath of mystery readers. And despite the many previous volumes, it works beautifully as a stand-alone

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail