Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Trade Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781635113037; 9781635113006; 9781974902927
Henery Press Publishing
268 Pages
$31.95; $15.95; $29.99; $6.99 Amazon
February 27, 2018
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Nightie Night! Interior decorator Madison Night is no stranger to the occasional odd inheritance. But when an octogenarian friend dies and leaves her a pajama factory, the bounty is bittersweet. Once a thriving business, Sweet Dreams closed decades ago after a tragic accident took the life of a young model. Or was that simply a cover up? Between her friend's death and her own stagnant life, Madison is tempted to hide under a blanket of willful ignorance. But when family members and special interest groups lobby to expose the secrets of the factory, Madison gets caught in a tangle of secrets and lies and discovers that sometimes, the bed you make is not your own.
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Madison Night is a Dallas, Texas interior decorator with a twist: she looks like Doris Day, dresses like her, and even her company, Mad for Mod, specializes in decor harking back to the 50's and 60's. Even though her boyfriend Hudson is miles away in Palm Springs, she thinks her life is almost perfect. Thinks. But Madison is in for some major surprises, and not all of them are going to be pleasant.
When she unexpectedly inherits a pajama factory that closed in the 50's due to an accidental death, she doesn't know why. When she meets John Sweet in front of the factory, he tells her that his step-grandmother Alice left it to her in her will, along with the contents of her house. He also said there's a sealed letter back at his office explaining everything. When she arrives at the office before John, she meets Vernon Stanley, who's concerned because they're tax attorneys, not estate planners. But once John arrives, Vernon insists on attending the proceedings just to make sure everything's on the up-and-up. When Madison reads the letter later that day, Alice wrote that that there were rumors the death wasn't accidental, and that her husband was thought to have been involved; but since it was devastating to him, he closed the factory.
Yet what should have been an easy acquisition isn't, and Madison finds herself in a dilemma: Even though the building has been sealed for many years, it seems people already know it has changed hands; so now the local historical society wants her to donate it and a group of protesters want to get inside to find evidence of murder, not an accidental death as everyone thought.
But there's more than that: Inside a storage facility that once belonged to Alice, Madison finds a gun, and immediately calls Tex. Then when she finally gets inside the factory another surprise awaits her in the form of a dead body. You'd think this would be enough to send anyone reeling, but Madison has more revelations ahead: Another body, another gun, and an actress who's tailing her nemesis Donna Nast in the hopes to win a part in a film based on an experience concerning herself and her boyfriend, who seems removed from everything she tells him about what's transpiring.
It all brings Madison to a place she's never had to face in her life, and it starts to unnerve her. Yet if she can't put the pieces together soon, it won't make a difference because she won't be alive to figure it out anyway...
This is the fifth book in the series, and in my opinion, the best. It doesn't take long before the narrative becomes intriguing, and once you're hooked, you want to know much like Madison where it all connects (as we know it must). While each piece of the puzzle is put in front of you, finding the right correlation takes time. It's a delicious mesh of clues that are scattered throughout, and once they start to come together, it creates a fascinating tale of lies and deceit that interweave seamlessly.
The characters have depth, the story plotted well; we are drawn into Madison's life as if we were truly a part of it, seeing things through her eyes. The words flow from the page easily, and Ms. Vallere has a real talent for engaging her readers early on and keeping them interested throughout.
When the murder is found and it all comes together, it's satisfying, and yet shows us how cold-blooded people can be. But finding a murderer isn't the end of the story, for Madison must also find herself and what she's been keeping in reserve. Watching her change is quite compelling, as much so as the main plot, and even though change is always inevitable within us, with some it's more difficult to to realize. The ending, though, leaves a glimpse of what might be and for myself, I find that quite an inviting thing to look forward to. Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Pajama-Frame-Madison-Night-Mystery/dp/1635113008/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2288063745
More on Diane Vallere's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/v/diane-vallere/
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