A Sour Note
Jill Piscitello
Cozy Mystery
On the heels of a public, broken engagement, Maeve Cleary returns to her childhood home in Hampton Beach, NH. When a dead body turns up behind her mother’s music school, three old friends land on the suspect list. Licking her wounds soon takes a back seat to outrunning the paparazzi who spin into a frenzy, casting her in a cloud of suspicion. Maeve juggles her high school sweetheart, a cousin with a touch of clairvoyance, a no-nonsense detective, and an apologetic, two-timing ex-fiancé. Will the negative publicity impact business at the Music Box— the very place she’d hoped to make a fresh start?
Uncaged Review: This cozy mystery starts us out with Maive going back to her hometown after catching her high profile fiancé cheating on her. With no job, and no where to live, she goes back to live with her mom, who is a widow and owns a music store called The Music Box. She runs into an old flame, Finn, and her friends she’s known her whole life. It doesn’t take long before a body is found in a dumpster behind her mom’s shop, and two of Maive’s best friends are the prime suspects. Not wanting to see her friends taking a rap for something she knows they didn’t do, and to keep from more publicity from hurting her mom’s shop, Maive starts to snoop around to find out how it happened, much to the local detective’s annoyance. As Maive digs, more suspects keeping popping up and more motives for the very unliked person that was murdered.
This is a fun mystery, the cast of characters are easy to like, and the mystery takes some dangerous turns, but Maive isn’t backing down even when she herself becomes a target for her snooping. The pace is great, and I never really guessed in this one, there were too many ways it could go. A fun afternoon read and I hope the author continues with the characters and the town in future books. Reviewed by Cyrene
4.5 Stars
