Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781683317050
Crooked Lane Books
304 Pages
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
October 9, 2018
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It's Mardi Gras season on the bayou, which means parades, pageantry, and gumbo galore. But when a flood upends life in the tiny town of Pelican, Louisiana - and deposits a body of a stranger behind the Crozat Plantation B&B - the celebration takes a decidedly dark turn. The citizens of Pelican are ready to Laissez les bon temps rouler - but there's beaucoup bad blood on hand this Mardi Gras.
Maggie Crozat is determined to give the stranger a name and find out why he was murdered. The post-flood recovery has delayed the opening of a controversial exhibit about the little-known Louisiana Orphan Train. And when a judge for the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen pageant is shot, Maggie's convinced the murder is connected to the body on the bayou. Does someone covet the pageant queen crown enough to kill for it? Could the deaths be related to the Orphan Train, which delivered its last charges to Louisiana in 1929? The leads are thin on this Fat Tuesday - and until the killer is unmasked, no one in Pelican is safe.
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Maggie Crozat spends her days working at her family's Crozat B&B and Doucet Plantation, which once belonged to her mother's family but has now been deeded to the state and opened to the public for tours, of which she is one of the guides.
But her life is changing once again: there's been recent floods that has left some homes inhabitable, and others who are cleaning up after the floods, of which Maggie and her family are doing. It's not a good sight when the body of an elderly man floats beneath all the debris, and an even worse sight when it's discovered that he wasn't the victim of the flood. But without any identification found on him, it's anyone's guess as to who he is or the motive for his death.
Then also she's been temporarily relieved of tour duty to restore a painting at Doucet that was also damaged by the flood; and when she begins she notices another painting underneath, one that could tell a tale on its own.
She's also been dragooned into standing in for her grandmother as a judge for the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen contestants, and she's doing her best to get out of that - and not succeeding - while discovering that being a contestant isn't what it's proclaimed to be.
At the last, her relationship with police detective Bo Durand may be in jeopardy since learning that he might not want any more children (due to the fact that his son has Asperger's Syndrome) and Maggie definitely wants at least two, and now they're barely speaking, and probably wouldn't be if it weren't for the murder.
But then another murder soon occurs, and it's one of the pageant committee members who may also have known something about the man who washed up after the flood. Maggie feels the need to give justice, but what is the connection with these two men, and will it get her killed before she can find the answers?...
Once again we are visiting the small Louisiana parish that Maggie Crozat calls home, this time during Mardi Gras season. And once again, the locals have their own unique way of celebrating the event. With her father tirelessly preparing his gumbo day after day in order to perfect it, Maggie thinks she's had enough of the concoction while her mother is unhappy that he's invaded her kitchen; and her friend Gaynell is making Maggie a costume for the Mardi Gras Run, which she has said she'll participate in.
Even Bo's son is getting in on the action, helping make the masks which are so adept at hiding peoples' faces that even their own relatives can't recognize them. It seems one and all are having fun during the time-honored event.
But when murder strikes one of the judges and the others are threatened, Maggie begins to wonder if it's not the pageant that's the issue, but the Orphan Train exhibit that was to go up at the historical society. And it makes for a very good mystery indeed as we watch her sift through clues and find the evidence to unmask a killer.
Ms. Byron takes us on another lovely journey into Cajun Country and all its quirky inhabitants, pulling us into the story from the first chapter and keeping us entertained throughout. It's a tale of, as the deceased judge said, secrets and lies; but oh, more secrets and lies than we could have imagined, and seeing how far someone would go to keep them is a nice taut tale indeed. When the ending comes and the murderer is finally revealed, it reveals that even those among us that appear the most sane may also have the most to hide.
I truly enjoyed reading this and hope that this series will continue on for a good long time. Maggie and her family and friends grow on you, and it's wonderful to visit with them whenever I can. I look forward to the next in the series. Highly recommended.
https://smile.amazon.com/Mardi-Gras-Murder-Country-Mystery/dp/168331705X/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2380077866
More on Ellen Byron's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/ellen-byron/
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