MURDER FROM A TO Z

Bookshop owner Samantha Washington and her zany crew go into high gear again when an estate planning workshop ends in murder.

If Samantha seems like a tough cookie, her attorney sister, Jenna, has her beat by a mile. So when Bethany Tarkington interrupts Jenna’s presentation at Market Street Mysteries to announce to all present that her companion, her husband’s aunt Alva, isn’t competent to determine how to dispose of her considerable fortune, Jenna schools Bethany but good on the legal niceties involved in making a will. Alva, who’s not nearly as mentally compromised as Bethany makes out, senses an ally in Sam and blinks out a distress message in Morse code. Sam and Jenna manage to get Alva alone, and she gives them an addendum to her will written on toilet paper. By the next day, the wealthy widow is dead. Sam summons her Nana Jo and Nana’s buddies from Shady Acres Retirement Village to investigate. More mayhem ensues, including another murder, stolen art treasures, and the unlikely romance between shambolic police detective Brad “Stinky” Pitt and Sam’s prospective mother-in-law, Camilia Patterson. The sharp-witted back-and-forth among the characters is a pleasure, as is the interplay between Sam’s investigation and the elements of it she embeds in the World War II–era British mystery she’s writing. But the solution to the puzzle, which incorporates unnecessary twists that add little to its logic, will prove dauntingly complex for most readers.

Enjoy the characters without worrying too much about the plot.