Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425194348
Berkley Publishing
272 Pages
$7.52; $7.99 Amazon
January 6, 2004
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Carmela Bertrand is hosting a late-night "Crop Till You Drop" session at her quaint French Quarter scrapbooking shop, Memory Mine. All the usual suspects have turned up to trim, decorate, color, and gossip.
But their all-night crop comes to a screeching halt when a neighboring antiques-shop owner winds up murdered in the alley behind the cozy store. And when Carmela and her customers become the focus of the police investigation, the scrapbooking expert realizes it's her responsibility to rearrange the jumble of clues and pick out the real killer -- before he strikes again.
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Carmela Bertrand owns a scrapbooking store, Memory Mine, in the heart of New Orleans. She's frequented by visitors and regulars alike. When she decides to have a late-night "Crop Till You Drop" session, she expects it will be with her usual customers. But when her neighbor, cranky Bartholomew Hayward, the owner of the antiques store next to her, knocks on her back door to tell her to move her car, she finds out she's not going to get what she expects after all. Especially when her employee Gabby offers to move Carmela's car, and the next thing she hears is Gabby's scream...
Carmela, along with the croppers, rush out and find Bartholomew's body in the alley - and he's been stabbed in the neck with a pair of crafting scissors. When the police suspect Barty's employee, Billy Cobb, of the murder, Carmela's friend Tandy Bliss is beside herself, because she's Billy aunt and refuses to believe him capable of murder.
On top of this, Carmela is still in love with her estranged husband Shamus, and she's surprised when he shows up and wants her to come to a party his sister Glory is giving. Glory has made it quite well known to Carmela that she doesn't like her at all, so this stuns her, but she still agrees to go, hoping that maybe they can be reconciled at some point.
When Tandy asks Carmela to help find the murderer since the police seem to be focused entirely on Billy, how can she refuse? So now Carmela is looking for a killer and trying to please everyone around her while she runs her business. But if her work load isn't going to kill her, someone else might just be looking to do it...
This is the second book in the series, and I did mention before that I've started with the later ones and enjoyed them so much that I decided to go back to the beginning. I'm very glad to say that I haven't been disappointed. Ms. Childs writes with a flair that brings you to the heart of New Orleans and everything around it. I've never been, but her books make me want to indeed visit this place. Her characters are lively and full of life, and I relish spending time with them.
The mystery itself is quite a lot of fun to read, with plenty of characters who wanted Barty dead, and the red herrings make it all that much more intriguing, with several going in different directions. I was surprised when I discovered the murderer, and that made it even more pleasing since it's always nice when you really can't figure it out.
In the end, everything was put together quickly and easily, and it left us wondering what will happen in the next book. Even though I know the eventual outcome, it's the journey that is the most interesting, and I will continue with this series. Recommended.
More on Laura Childs's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/laura-childs/
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