Very few guilty feelings around this garage but lots of quietly guilty behavior.
Wary readers can add Shefford’s Garage to the list of places where things can go fatally wrong in the amber-preserved village of Fethering.
Carole Seddon may have been a well-informed functionary of the Home Office, but she doesn’t know a thing about cars. So when some vandal smashes the rear window of her Renault as she’s enjoying a dinner at the local pub with healer Jude Nicholls, her friend and frequent partner in criminal investigation, she takes it to Bill Shefford and asks him to fix it. He recommends a glass-replacement specialist who turns out not to be on the list of specialists Carole’s insurer will reimburse, but since Carole’s “fear of doing something wrong was not as strong as her fear of drawing attention to herself,” she burns the threatening follow-up note someone has left and pays for the repair herself. When Bill, working in a maintenance pit, is crushed to death by a gear box that falls out of Tom Kendrick’s Triumph Tr6, Carole’s recent experience makes her especially keen on working out who might have helped the unlikely weapon on its way. Malee Shefford, the Thai bride Bill wed less than a year ago? Billy Shefford, his son and heir-no-longer-quite-so-apparent? Listless, depressive Tom, who’s kept afloat by his mother, Natalie? Jeremiah, the newly arrived healer who wants to join the uninterested Jude in opening a center for alternative healing and who briefly treated Tom before Natalie invited Jude to take on the unappetizing task? The thief who made off with Bill’s will and his appointments diary? Or Carole’s anonymous correspondent, who keeps sending her threatening notes?
Very few guilty feelings around this garage but lots of quietly guilty behavior.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78029-132-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lots of recipes, household tips, quaint locals, and sometimes sharp squabbles—but the big story here is bling.
The DIY Festival Sophie Winston’s been asked to plan for Alexandria’s Old Town goes off the rails when someone starts killing off her neighbors.
It would be hard to imagine a more inoffensive victim than Lark Bickford, but the widowed socialite takes a fatal tumble that looks very suspicious only a day after returning from a guided tour of Portugal. Her family members are instantly scandalized—not that she may have been murdered (her body has barely cooled when they start selling off her period furniture and pricey china), but that her will includes a spendthrift trust that will keep her grown children, Bennett and Paisley, and Paisley’s husband, self-styled advice guru Frank Eames, from liquidating the rest of her assets any time soon. Even more dismaying is the news that the trustee is Humphrey Brown, the secret lover whom a neighbor spotted leaving her house shortly before her corpse was discovered. The family’s outrage is soon complicated by the remarkably similar death of Dulci Chapman, art therapist–turned–food blogger, who’d taken the same guided tour as Lark. So had assistant medical examiner Dr. Peter Chryssos, Sophie’s friend Nina Reid Norwood, and Sophie’s ex-husband, Mars Winston. Wonder how safe they are? In between complimenting most of the DIY exhibitors and fielding Greer Shacklesworth’s endless complaints, the unflappable Sophie asks everyone who’ll listen what the design Lark scrawled as she was dying might have meant.
Lots of recipes, household tips, quaint locals, and sometimes sharp squabbles—but the big story here is bling.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4967-3273-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The appended specialty grilled cheese recipes and a hint of romance add spice to a promising new series.
Eschewing her beloved cats, last seen in The Girl With the Kitten Tattoo (2020), Reilly debuts a cheesy new series.
After the death of her husband, Carly Hale returns to her charming Vermont hometown and opens her dream restaurant devoted to all things grilled cheese. All goes well until her new landlord, Lyle Bagley, gives her notice that he plans to turn her shop into a boutique run by his girlfriend, Tiffany. When Tiffany finds Lyle dead in the alley behind the restaurant, Carly’s an obvious suspect, but there are many others who hated Lyle. Unfortunately, one of them is Carly’s valued worker, Suzanne, whose dicey position makes Carly decide to do a bit of sleuthing. The police chief is an old family friend who takes time from a rash of high-end burglaries to warn Carly to be careful. It turns out that Lyle was a dishonest slum landlord whose adoring secretary did his bidding and that his half brother, who’s still furious over not getting their father’s Cadillac, is back in town. The editor of the town’s free weekly newspaper, whom Carly once babysat, wants her to team up with him to find the killer. Getting help from friends who go all the way back to high school, Carly apparently spooks the culprit, whose threatening notes suggest that she may be slated to be the next victim.
The appended specialty grilled cheese recipes and a hint of romance add spice to a promising new series.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72823-832-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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