mystery

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Mardi Gras Murder,” by Ellen Byron, is an Agatha Award winner. The family of Magnolia Marie (Maggie) Crozat, an artist/B&B owner, has lived in Louisiana for generations. In the weeks before Mardi Gras, a torrential rain hits the Parish, submerging houses as the water rises. Wreckage is left behind, but so is the body of a stranger, found at the back of the Crozat property. But Mardi Gras will go on in the tight-knit community, despite the damage and the dead body.

In this entertaining Cajun mystery, gumbo pots are sacred and locked in safes along with secret recipes. Happily, because of the internal Crozat family competition for the top gumbo prize, there are several cooking scenes. I could smell the fabulous seafood gumbo while it simmered on the stove, and learned there are as many kinds of gumbo as there are cooks to debate their choices. Byron cleverly included that banter in the book.

“Mardi Gras Murder” engages and informs us with local history and dialect while supplying us with more than one mystery to solve, more than one body, and more than one plausible suspect, along with yummy sounding recipes.

“The Fixer” by Joseph Finder

Former legitimate journalist, Rick Hoffman, is down on his luck, his girlfriend has thrown him out, and he has to sleep on a couch in his dad’s old home. In the process of chasing squirrels in the house that has been neglected for years, Hoffman discovers a secret in the attic – a $3 million stash.

Finder has a genius for making his heroes real and as un-Bond-like as possible, yet with enough smarts as necessary to get them out of trouble, and trouble abounds in this barn-burner of a book.

Hoffman looks into what his father was doing before his severe stroke twenty years earlier. Word gets out and bad guys trip over each other in “The Fixer” to keep Hoffman quiet, including car trunks, plastic ties, tracking devices, and assorted other scare tactics. With lots of action and jaw-dropping twists, there are moments when you wonder if our hero, Rick Hoffman, will live through it all.

The reason behind the $3 million stash is absorbing and serious at its core. Finder made me wonder if the plot was based on a real-life incident, but only he and some of the citizens of Boston know the truth for sure. “The Fixer” is one of the best thrillers I’ve read.

“Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake” by Sarah Graves

Sarah Graves, author of the popular Home Repair Is Homicide series, has a spinoff series that begins with “Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake,” featuring Jacobia Tiptree and Ellie White from Eastport, Maine. They now own a chocolate shop, The Chocolate Moose.

When Jacobia arrives at The Chocolate Moose one morning, the place is dark and she trips over a very dead health inspector, his head leaning into a pot of chocolate. A health inspector she and Ellie have been battling with.

Can a chocolate shop recover from a dead guy falling into its signature chocolate? “Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake” features a great mystery with clever misdirection, warm friendships, touching scenes with her father that brought tears to my eyes, a missing son with a surprise of his own, a hurricane, and a Maine setting that is a character in itself.

“Unholy Covenant” by Lynn Chandler Willis

“Unholy Covenant” is a fascinating fictional account of Patricia Kimble’s real-life murder in small town North Carolina. Willis, former newspaper owner/reporter, followed the Kimble case during the investigations and the trial, and had access to all the major players. I was thoroughly engaged as she described what led to the murder of this inconvenient wife.

Willis gives us a chilling look at the ways Kimble ruled his corner of the world by fear, lies, intimidation, and a bit of charm, taking advantage of the weaknesses he saw in the people around him.

Follow along as accusations, confessions, arson, burglary, and hit lists are revealed in “Unholy Covenant,” an amazing look behind the scenes of a case that still intrigues the public decades later.