L eslie Meier’s “Easter Egg Murder” finds both of her series protagonists, newspa per reporter Lucy Stone and empty-nest amateur sleuth Carole Capobianco, tangled in a murder investigation.
Traveling to see their daughter Elizabeth in France, Lucy and her husband, Bill, run into an eccentric couple from Providence, Rhode Island, whom readers will recognize from Meier’s first in a new mystery series, “A Matter of Pedigree.”
While in France, Carole and her husband Frank visit her mother, Polly, who has moved from Paris to Provence, where the family settles at her French farmhouse for the holiday.
An accidental meeting between Lucy and Carole blossoms into a friendship, igniting an engaging and entertaining mystery.
Midway through the plot, Carole invites Lucy and Bill to her mother’s house and introduces her to the rest of the family. That evening, a murder is committed during dinner. Mathilda, the Capobianco’s housekeeper, is found strangled to death in another part of the house.
Meier’s latest novella offers familiar charm and cordial laughter among friends. Readers will enjoy the unifying of series characters in one absorbing mystery.
Fans of Lee Hollis’s Bar Harbor series will devour the latest small-town mystery, “Death by Another Easter Egg.”
Food writer and restaurateur Hayley Powell investigates the death of an ambitious young reporter dining at Hayley’s Kitchen.
Reporter and friend Emma Lane, writer for Island Times, is out with her boyfriend, Alex, excited to taste the holiday choices: ham for Emma and a vegan alternative for Alex. When midway, the situation springs into chaos, and Emma suddenly clutches her throat.
Emma collapses in front of the other diners, and her friend Hayley rushes over to Emma in panic.
But it is too late. Emma dies at the scene, leaving Hayley and the restaurant contingent in confusion and panicked about what happened.
Hayley scrambles to help the local police department crack the case of her friend’s death and save her eatery’s reputation. But as Hayley investigates further, what she unearths is much more damaging than she could ever imagine.
A solid, surprising, and enjoyable read, Hollis cleverly plots and directs the reader through a twisty maze of well-drawn characters and constructed plots.
An egg hunt goes horribly wrong when a local cookbook author is discovered dead at the festivities in Peggy Ehrhart’s tepid holiday novella, “An Eggy Way to Die.”
Forty-year-old Arborville culinary author, Ellen Weatherby, is found by another resident, Midge Raymond, in a stand of trees near the tennis court. A note, left next to the body, suggests that Weatherby was at the events for more than an egg hunt. After reading the note, associate editor of Fiber Craft magazine, Pamela Paterson, and her sidekick friend and editor of the Advocate, Bettina, noted that Weatherby was in search of a romantic rendezvous, which may have been the victim’s motive for attending the festivities in the first place.
Detective Clayborn investigates a circle of egg hunt participants who were present at the festivities and probes questions to possible suspects.
Pamela Paterson and Bettina delve into the case, setting out to interview townspeople and neighbors about the Easter egg hunt, hoping to shed light on the killer.
Ehrhart’s skilled plotting keeps the reader engrossed in the murder plot but veers into random tangents about food, fashion, and knitting, and at times sidelines the mystery.
Rob Osler’s superb second novel, “The Case of the Murdered Muckraker,” featuring the intrepid, wise, and colorful investigator sleuth Harriet Morrow, brings back the reliable storytelling from the previous book, “The Case of the Missing Maid.”
Harriet is assigned a case of a murdered journalist at the start of this winning mystery, set against the backdrop of the Progressive Era, where social and economic issues, such as child labor, poverty, political corruption, and tenement housing immigration, seize the story.
While interviewing an immigrant women living at a tenement about the murder of a muckraker named Eugene Eldridge, Harriet sets out to learn why Eugene was at the tenement and who he was there to see. As she steps on toes and sidesteps the judicial law of detective work, Harriet finds herself muddying the waters with some not-so-kind characters who do not take kindly to the nosy, pushy, tenacious woman who will stop at nothing to solve the murder—even if it means placing herself in life-and-death situations.
Harriet learns that Eugene attended a few meetings of a radical socialist group called The People’s Cause, about which he was writing an expose. But the truth of who Eugene’s subject was increases death threats against Harriet if she proceeds with the investigation.
Armed with a loaded pistol, courtesy of her boss, Mr. Prescott at the Prescott Detective Agency, the stakes are higher for Harriet. Her staunch steadfastness finds her in dangerous territory, her life placed in serious risk by the violent threats made to her by cruel, violent men. Through many twists and turns, Harriet continues to search for the person or persons responsible for the heinous act, even though she hears whispers to end the investigation.
Olsen writes with passion and crafts a believably innovative 19th-century Chicago, integrating queer social issues with historical detail, and creating a credible, thought-provoking, unforgettable heroine.