Author: Leslie Meier
Series: Lucy Stone #7
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Kensington Books
Format: Kindle
Date Published: 2002; 2008
No. of Pages: 276
My Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb:
Tinker’s Cove has a long history of Thanksgiving festivities, from visits with TomTom Turkey to the annual Warriors high school football game and Lucy Stone’s impressive pumpkin pie. But this year, someone has added murder to the menu, and Lucy intends to discover who left Metinnicut Indian activist Curt Nolan deader than the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey—with an ancient war club next to his head.
The list of suspects isn’t exactly a brief one. Nolan had a habit of disagreeing with just about everybody he met. Between fixing dinner for twelve and keeping her four kids from tearing each other limb from limb, Lucy has a pretty full plate already. So what’s a little investigation? But if she’s not careful, she just may find herself served up as a last-minute course, stone-cold dead with all the trimmings…
My thoughts:
It is another busy holiday season for Lucy Stone and her family. Thanksgiving is quickly approaching and Lucy is as occupied as always. Her family is growing fast, and her oldest, Toby is away at his first year of college. Lucy and the family are eager for him to come home for Thanksgiving. Lucy is still working part-time at the town's newspaper and is currently covering the town's meetings. There is something going on and lots of people are up in arms.
Before long, as is always the case in the Lucy Stone series, there is a murder. Although Lucy has some freedom as a reporter, she plans to leave the investigation to the police. But, one of her dear friends pleads with her to look into it. What else can Lucy do but comply? Lucy has one suspect in mind and is determined to find answers.
This is book 7 in the series, and it is an enjoyable read. There is an even mix of Lucy on the job, on the case and with her family. I wasn't crazy about Lucy in a couple of books where I wasn't fond of her parenting skills, but I am liking her again in this book. She is indeed a great Mom, seasoned as she is. She is pretty good at her job, although a bit distracted, and she annoys her boss a bit.
This series continues with Wedding Day Murder. These books are really all great reads. Even if the characters can get a bit annoying, there is always an interesting case to be solved. This story, like the others, are light reads, but the mysteries are enough to capture my interest. I look forward to continuing on with all of Leslie Meier's books, which are still in production.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
I started writing in the late ‘80s when I was attending graduate classes at Bridgewater State College. I wanted to become certified to teach high school English and one of the required courses was Writing and the Teaching of Writing. My professor suggested that one of the papers I wrote for that course was good enough to be published and I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories. I got $100 for the story and I’ve been writing ever since. The teaching, however, didn’t work out.
My books draw heavily on my experience as a mother of three and my work as a reporter for various weekly newspapers on Cape . My heroine, Lucy Stone, is a reporter in the fictional town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, where she lives in an old farmhouse (quite similar to mine on Cape Cod!) with her restoration carpenter husband Bill and four children. As the series has progressed the kids have grown older, roughly paralleling my own family. We seem to have reached a point beyond which Lucy cannot age–my editor seems to want her to remain forty-something forever, though I have to admit I personally am dying to write “Menopause is Murder!”
I usually write one Lucy Stone mystery every year and as you can tell, my editor likes me to feature the holidays in my books. Of course Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and my newest mystery “Eggnog Murder,” is included in an anthology with two other Christmas novellas by Barbara Ross and Lee Hollis. I’ve long been a fan of the classic English country house mystery, and was a faithful watcher of “Downton Abbey,” so I couldn’t resist trying to write one. I think I succeeded rather well, if I do say so myself, with “British Manor Murder,” which came out in October, 2016.
My books are classified as “cozies” but a good friend insists they are really “comedies of manners” and I do enjoy expressing my view of contemporary American life.
Now that the kids are grown — we have five fabulous grandchildren — my husband and I are enjoying dividing our time between Braintree and Cape Cod, along with our cat, Sylvester.
No comments:
Post a Comment