Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781643854601
Crooked Lane Publishing
304 Pages
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
September 8, 2020
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Maggie Crozat, proprietor of a historic Cajun Country B&B, prefers to get the good times roll. But hard times rock her hostelry when a new cell phone app makes it easy for locals to rent their spare rooms to tourists. With October -- and Halloween -- approaching, she conjures up a witch-crafty marketing scheme to draw visitors to Pelican, Louisiana.
Five local plantation B&Bs host "Pelican's Spooky Past" packages, featuring regional crafts, unique menus, and a pet costume parade. Topping it off, the derelict Dupois cemetery is the suitably sepulchral setting for the spine-chilling play Resurrection of a Spirit. But all the witchcraft has inevitably conjured something: her B&B guests are being terrified out of town by sightings of the legendary rougarou, a cross between a werewolf and a vampire.
When, in the Dupois cemetery, someone costumed as a rougarou stumbles onstage during the play -- and promptly gives up the ghost, the rougarou mask having been poisoned with strychnine, Maggie is on the case. But as more murders stack up, Maggie fears that Pelican's spooky past has nothing on its bloodcurdling present.
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Maggie Crozat runs a Cajun Country B&B along with her parents. They're doing their best to keep the old plantation alive, but lately it's been hard with Gavin Grody, creator of an app called Rent My Digs, moving in and buying up all the affordable housing and turning them into "owner" rentals. So, along with the other owners of local B&B's, they've decided to create "Pelican's Spooky Past" packages for visitors this Halloween. Each B&B will do something different, and there will also be a pet parade and other various events. People are also looking forward to readings from Helene Breville, a local Voodoo priestess, and to top it off, Maggie has opened a new spa on premises that she hopes will bring in even more guests.
Staying at the Crozat B&B, along with a couple of other guests, is part of the cast of a local play that was written by Quentin MacIlhoney, attorney extraordinaire. She's also looking forward to meeting her distant cousins for the first time - Susannah Crozat McDowell, her husband Doug, and his twins from a former marriage, Bonnie and Johnny; they'll be staying in the old schoolhouse that Maggie has converted into her art studio.
But things don't go as planned: guests have sighted a rougarou - an old Cajun legend of a creature that has a man's body and the face of a werewolf - even though Maggie and her family try to tell them it doesn't exist. But when someone careens onto the stage during the play wearing a mask of a rougarou, screaming, it's soon discovered that they've been poisoned with strychnine.
Even though the Pelican PD doesn't believe any of the Crozats capable of such a crime, not so with a neighboring PD who also has jurisdiction at the cemetery where the play was being performed. And the lead detective has his eye on Maggie, who needs to find a killer before her own head is in a noose....
This is the sixth book in the series and as such, just as interesting as all the others. You are drawn in from the very Prologue, where people respect their ancestry instead of trying to eliminate it. The time is nearing Halloween, and where else would it be spooky except in the bayou of Louisiana? The Crozats are hoping for a successful month, but don't expect that it's going to turn out exactly the way it does -- with a dead body on their hands.
Now Maggie's targeted as the killer and knows she needs to find who wanted the victim dead. But it isn't going to be easy with everything else going on around her, including her promise to go trick-or-treating with her fiancé Detective Bo Durand and his son Xander. But in between it all, the fact remains that someone is terrorizing the tourists by pretending to be rougarous, and a killer is still on the loose, and Maggie is still the main suspect. Only by using all of her wits is she going to be able to find out who's doing it and save her own skin in the process.
Maggie is intelligent, witty, and can think on her feet; she's grown from when the series began, and I love the fact that Xander is coming out of his shell and their relationship is also changing. Her parents are delightful, and her Grandmeré is a hoot, being almost oblivious to everything around her except her wedding planning -- which includes a lot of cake tastings. I also like the fact that Rufus has changed. In the first book he detested the Crozats, but now I've come to like him quite a bit. (I really detest the 'evil nemesis' of sheriffs who hate the protagonists in books). It really makes these books a pleasure to read.
Ms. Byron is an immensely talented writer who can bring us to Cajun country and make us almost taste the food (which I am definitely craving), and feel the humidity in the air. Her descriptions of the area are wonderful, as are her descriptions of the people. They come alive on the page, and you can almost hear their accents when they speak. It's a completely enjoyable experience.
When the ending comes and the killer was revealed, it was a complete surprise, which is a good thing. The reasons for the murder are never reasonable to anyone except the murderer, yet we are left with the promise of more to come. I eagerly await the next in the series. Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Bayou-Boneyard-Country-Mystery-ebook/dp/B082H3BT6F/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3225622311
More on Ellen Byron's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/ellen-byron/
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