Three of my favorite cozy writers serve up a St. Patrick’s Day themed trio of mysteries set in coastal Maine and the result is a dark but slightly sweet brew with a kick, just like Irish Coffee. Though I find holiday themed trilogies vary in quality this one delivered suspense, entertainment and solid plots without being farfetched or tired.
The Leslie Meier mystery opens with Lucy Stone doing a special feature article on local teenagers who are competing in a regional Celtic Irish step dancing contest and Lucy travels to Portland to attend. What starts out as a fun and spirited event is ruined by an embarrassing accident to the most talented dancer and accusations fly exposing the ambitions and loyalties of the dancers and their protective mothers. Later on one of the parents is found mysteriously dead and the ex-husband becomes the primary suspect. The rivalries spill over into other town Continue reading “Irish Coffee Murder – Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, Barbara Ross”
This mystery is set in a Victorian London swathed in smoggy fog with omnibuses pulled by horses, railways clattering by, steamboats on the Thames, smoke filled pubs and posh squares lined with newly built townhouses. The London of an evolving Scotland Yard when ‘case files’ were considered a novel policing technique and women riding bicycles was considered risqué, when men routinely wore top hats and women perched small hats on their heads and wore elaborate dresses with bustles. The heroine is also a novelty a single woman journalist working on Fleet Street for a daily paper. She is struggling to survive after a career setback and is offered a lifeline by a young Scotland Yard inspector who needs her insider knowledge to assist him in solving the scandalous murder of a famous actress, Lizzie Dixie, whom she was friends with. Penny Green agrees to help only if she is re-instated at her old job and she tries to balance her own sorrow with her desire to find justice for her old friend and Annie, her daughter. Penny’s connections in the theater world gain access for her and the inspector to meet with the Drury Lane theater proprietor Sebastian an early supporter of Lizzie and Lizzie’s husband an overbearing successful showman in the style of a P.T. Barnum.
This mystery is fresh and original and invokes the era of victory gardens, rationing, scrap metal drives and the music, fashion, movies and values of WWII 1940’s America. Set in Progress, a prosperous town with its own local newspaper the story is told from the perspective of Irene, acting editor-in-chief replacing her dad who is serving on the Pacific front. Irene was formerly limited to the women’s page but is running the paper following local stories and war news while managing staff and editing the paper. A series of anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism against shop owner and neighbors, is big local news which exposes the divisions between supporters of the war and those sympathetic to the Third Reich. That story overlaps another when her best investigative reporter takes off to follow up on a secret lead and is found dead, days later at the bottom of his cellar stairs. Meanwhile her mother rents a room to a young mysterious NYC singer Katherine who moves to town to work in the local Ironworks factory just re-tooled to produce massive quantities of parts for tanks, airplanes etc.
This series is just the ticket for armchair travelers who enjoy traditional mysteries, the amateur detective, Lana, is a former investigative journalist, blacklisted after an expose turned in a career ending disaster who re-invents herself as a tour guide for Wanderlust Tours. She enjoys the travel, the people and the perks but things don’t always follow the itinerary. In this Mother and Daughter themed Mother’s Day tour to Amsterdam the first surprise is when Lana’s estranged mother joins the tour and events go downhill from there.
This latest entry, the 26th, in the endearing Lucy Stone Mystery series was not more of the same holiday themed home spun cozy, instead it was more of a thriller than a malice domestic mystery. I literally could not put it down because the suspense becomes riveting, what begins as a typical cozy gradually develops into a rather dark and frightening tale.
This suspenseful mystery features Bailey Weggins as an investigative reporter for a new website, Crime Beat, on her first assignment in the tourist area of Lake George, NY to report on the breaking story of a missing, wealthy local businessman’s wife who disappeared one morning in early Fall.