MURDER ON THE BUCKET LIST

A group of 70-ish bridge buddies gets together to help check off an item on one member’s bucket list.

Francine, Alice, Joy, Mary Ruth, and Charlotte have gathered at Alice’s pool so that Joy can tackle item No. 10: skinny-dipping. By good luck or bad, they discover a murder victim in the pool house. Charlotte, a fan of mystery novels, is happy because No. 1 on her list is to solve a murder. Joy is also delighted, since No. 6 on her list is being on the front page of a major newspaper. She quickly parlays the club’s notoriety into an appearance on Good Morning America. Alice is altogether less pleased because her husband, Larry, becomes a suspect after it’s revealed that he’d been renting a garage to the late Friederich Guttmann, a race car mechanic known for working with local driver Jake Maehler. Larry was supposed to be out of town, but it turns out that he wasn’t. In fact, he’s been keeping many secrets from Alice, including his possession of a large sum of money. Francine’s husband, Jonathan, is Larry’s accountant, but he refuses to tell Francine any of Larry’s secrets. As Charlotte’s best friend, Francine is drawn into investigating the murder by the irrepressible Charlotte, who’ll stop at nothing to solve the crime. As they uncover more secrets and withhold evidence from the police, they put themselves squarely in the killer’s sights.

Bubbly characters keep this cozy debut lively as you search through the red herrings for the big fish.