IT HAPPENED ONE MURDER

Lawson makes the transition from YA to adult fiction with a brightly written mystery with more than a whiff of romance.

Three surprises punctuate the party her much-married mother holds for Harriet Baker on the mother’s estate on New Jersey’s Logan Island. First, one of the catering staff reveals he’s Nic Allbright, the classmate who gave Harriet solace after her high school boyfriend, Adam Kozel, ghosted her the day after graduation eight years ago. Then her latest stepfather, loathsome developer George George, is found stabbed to death a few steps away from the merrymakers on the beach. The party is capped when the police arrest Nic’s older sister, chef Sara Allbright, who’d been arguing with George minutes earlier and who provided the murder weapon. Harriet, who’s been reluctantly sheltering with her mother since getting fired from her reporting job, joins forces with Nic to gather evidence that will exonerate Sara and maybe get Harriet’s job back. It’s an uneasy alliance since Nic still carries a torch for Harriet, and she was attracted to him before she even realized who he was, but neither can bring themselves to express their feelings, and new obstacles to their reunion pop up whenever things look promising. Even so, the romantic elements here, hackneyed as they are, take unquestionable precedence over the mystery elements, though Harriet’s climactic inspiration for how to get Sara sprung is indeed inspired.

Fans of classic rom-coms will appreciate just how accurate a title the author has chosen for this mystery lite.