Leslie Meier’s entertaining 31st Lucy Stone Mystery, “Bridal Shower Murder,” finds the intrepid newspaper reporter juggling a deadline amid murder and hosting a bridal shower for her daughter.
Wedding bells are ringing in quaint Tinker’s Cove, Maine, as the Stone family prepares for Zoe’s declaration of her engagement to Chad, a rising minor league baseball player with an abundance of Southern charm.
News in the small Maine town spreads like wildfire, and soon everybody in and out of the Stone family social circle has an opinion about the announcement. Nobody is more persuasive than Chad’s mother, Paula, who is a burden to Lucy when she interjects herself into planning Zoe’s wedding shower. Paula takes over the preparations, paying for everything and setting a wedding date without Zoe and Chad’s permission.
What was supposed to be a small, simple affair between family and friends turns into a squabble of differences. Lucy, determined to stop the madness of Paula’s overbearing behavior, must also extinguish another fire close to home.
A murder puts the town on high alert as Lucy Stone sets out to search for answers to Tinker’s Cove’s prominent citizen. Hettie Furness, head of the town’s Historical Society, goes missing but is later found dead.
“Bridal Shower Murder” is a stellar whodunit filled with historical and complicated family drama, making it one of the best reads in Meier’s long-running mystery series.
Elle Cosimano’s complicated, hilarious, and multi-layered world in “Finlay Donovan is Killing It” finds the main protagonist, Finlay Donovan, knee-deep in murder and retribution.
Struggling as a novelist, juggling a messy divorce, and raising two kids is just the tip of the iceberg for Finlay, as her life soon takes a dramatic detour and spirals into a roller-coaster of stressed-out, life-or-death situations.
Wrestling to make it to the finish line for a novel she promised her literary agent she would finish puts Finlay in a dilemma if she does not write it. Trying to make ends meet, Finlay relies on her ex-husband, Steven, to help pay the bills, but Finlay realizes that he has added to her mounting problems when he fires her nanny without telling her.
Steven threatens to bring Finlay to court for full custody of their children if she does not start taking the role of a responsible caregiver and mother seriously for their children and get a “real job” to pay her fair share of monthly bills.
Overwhelmed and unable to cope with Steven’s staggering admission, Finlay takes lunch with her agent at Panera Bread to help strategize and work out the kinks of her work-in-progress novel. Overheard by a patron sitting next to her discussing the wayward plot of her suspense book, Finlay is mistaken for a contract killer, and soon her life is turned topsy-turvy when art imitates life and Finlay inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problematic husband for $50,000.
She retrieves a note left by an anonymous, desperate wife to call the number provided to help her make her husband disappear and accept the hefty award.
Cleverly plotted, witty, and deliciously addictive, mystery readers will devour the first in a series, and clamor to read more about the unusual life of Finlay Donovan.
George Simenon’s cleverly astute French detective, Jules Maigret, finds himself solving a mysterious murder of a young woman shot to death in the skillfully executed novel, “Maigret’s Pickpocket.”
The short novel opens with Maigret riding a bus in Paris when a fellow traveler lifts his wallet and returns it the next day with a dilemma and apology.
Maigret’s temper is in check during the bus ride, and he is even cordial and eager to discover the reason for the young man’s misconduct of pickpocketing his personal belongings.
When interviewing the young man, Maigret learns that he is hard up for money and will stop at nothing to steal a few dollars. “Any amount will do to get by,” he tells the detective.
But the thief adds another layer of tension and suspense to the brief, highly entertaining narrative when he informs the detective of a murder. Tagging along with the stranger and listening to his defense, Maigret uncovers the body of the young man’s wife lying dead in their apartment, half of her head shot off.
This marvelously disconcerting mystery is filled with complexity, ruthlessness, and genius. Simenon’s eye for detail adds nuance, color, and intricacy of the human condition.
— Thomas Grant Bruso is a Plattsburgh resident who writes fiction and has been an avid reader of genre fiction since he was a kid. Readers and writers are invited to connect and discuss books and writing at www.facebook.com/thomasgrantbruso