Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781575663920
Kensington Publishing
256 Pages
Various Prices; $6.89 Digital; Amazon
September 1, 1996
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Between ballet lessons, Little League practice, carpooling her kids to school, and a husband in need of attention, fourth-time mother-to-be Lucy Stone has more than enough on her plate this long, hot summer, But when one of her dearest friends vanishes, Lucy's soft spot for a solid mystery gets the better of her. Dinner can wait. Tinker's Cove, Maine's most irrepressible sleuth has a job to do...
An afternoon walk was a ritual for Caroline Hutton...until the retired ballet instructor took a detour into the woods and was never seen again. The case takes a turn for the worse when a local storeowner takes a deathblow to the head with a video camera. Now, as Lucy's own seven-year-old prima ballerina rehearses for her debut, a murderer prepares for an encore. the devoted mother and sleuth knows she mustn't miss either performance. In fact, her life depends on it.
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Lucy Stone is pregnant with her fourth child and trying to keep it together juggling ballet lessons, Little League practice, putting meals on the table, and anything else as it comes up. She’s worried when her friend Caroline Hutton goes missing, but her husband Bill assures her that the police will do their best and to stay out of it, telling her that it’s none of her business and she has other things she needs to take care of instead.
One of Lucy’s friends, Franny, works at a hardware store in town as cashier and clerk. She’s not happy when the owner’s grandson comes to work, discovering that he’s the probable thief who’s stealing from them — but his grandfather thinks it’s her, and demands repayment in a few days. Franny, determined to give proof, begs Lucy for the use of her video camera to catch him. But when she’s removing the camera a day later, he sees her and thinks she stole the money to buy it. Now she needs to tell Lucy that he has the camera and won’t give it back. So Lucy goes to the store to retrieve the camera and finds the body of Morrill Slack. Now, Franny’s been arrested for the murder and Lucy’s sure she’s innocent.
Then Lucy and Tatiana, her daughters’ ballet instructor, decide to go through Caro’s scrapbooks to see if they can find a clue as to where she might have gone. But what she finds connects more than one person and one event, and when it all comes together for Lucy, it could be worse than she at first believes, and could change her life forever, or even get her killed...
This is the second book in the series and while this is labeled as a cozy and they can touch on dark subjects, this one was way too dark in its handling of domestic abuse and its aftermath; and while not an easy subject to address in any way for any person, it was graphic and violent and shouldn't be considered a cozy. Once someone has experienced it (as I have, firsthand), it’s not something you want to revisit, nor even remember; but it’s not something you ever forget. Therefore, there were passages that were difficult to read and I probably wouldn't have read this book if I had known beforehand.
While I never really connected with Lucy’s life — I did feel that Bill didn’t give her enough slack when she was pregnant and the hormones keep pushing at you no matter what you do; I felt that yes, although he’s working full-time, he helped make those kids and should have reached out a bit to help his pregnant wife when he could, not just come home and pop open a beer and decide that’s it’s for him. A good husband would at least allow her time to rest before the baby’s born, so there was that.
Anyhow, the rest of the book seemed to come together nicely without any problems, and when the ending comes and the murderer was revealed, although I didn’t find it too compelling it was fine, and I will read the next in the series to see if I will continue with it or not.
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