Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback: Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425276587
Berkley Prime Crime
282 Pages
$7.99; $2.99 Amazon
August 4, 2015
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After Meg Barrett found out her fiancé still had designs on his ex-wife, she decided it was time to refurbish her life. Leaving her glamorous job at a top home and garden magazine, she fled Manhattan for Montauk, only to find that decorating can sometimes lead to detecting...
In between scouring estate sales for her new interior design business, Cottages by the Sea, Meg visits the swanky East Hampton home of her old college roommate, Jillian Spenser. But instead of seeing how the other half lives, she learns how the other half dies. Jillian's mother, known as the Queen Mother of the Hamptons, has been murdered. Someone has staged a coup.
When she helps a friend inventory the Spensers' estate for the insurance company, Meg finds herself right in the thick of things. cataloging valuable antiques and art loses its charm when Meg discovers that the Spenser family had been hiding dangerous secrets, which may have furnished a murderer with a motive. As Meg gets closer to the truth, the killer will do anything to paint her out of the picture...
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Meg Barrett moved to Montauk after she found out her fiancé was still interested in his ex-wife. Leaving her job as an editior for a home and garden magazine, she now lives in a cottage on the beach while offering her decorating services to people. After being approached by the mother of an old school friend to inventory her home for insurance purposes, she enters the home and finds that Caroline Spenser is dead, and her daughter Jillian is holding her in her arms.
After calling the police and being questioned, she finds that Jillian has developed amnesia about the event, and doesn't remember anything. To add to that, Jillian's brother Cole has returned after seventeen years away and is silent on the subject of why he left. While Meg is inventorying the home with her friend Elle, she also discovering that there might be more to the murder than what is known, and she's subtly looking into it.
But when she starts to become slightly involved with Cole, and all evidence points toward him, she refuses to believe he's a murderer. It's going to take a lot of work on her part to find out who's framing him, and it just might get her killed if she's not careful...
This is the first in the Hamptons Home & Gardens Mysteries, and I'm rather sorry I waited so long to read it. Having been disillusioned about another series of Ms. Bridge's, it took me awhile to take the time, but I'm glad I did. This book was delightful.
The plot is done very well, and the character of Meg is different in the fact that she's had a hearing loss as a child and depends upon hearing aids; this has also given her the ability to read lips, and she garners quite a bit of information this way. Meg's character is quite developed in this book, and she's intelligent and able to pick up clues without pestering people and accusing them of murder. It serves her well.
I do like the character of Doc, an ex-cop who's her self- appointed guardian, and also the fact that Tripod the dog, also another damaged being, becomes helpful to her, too. Her friend Elle is definitely different, but loyal, along with other friends of Meg's; although the rest of the secondary characters -- and there were plenty of them -- had their own secrets to hide.
It is these secrets that Meg must sift through to find the truth, and it leads her down a path no one quite expected. When she starts to put everything together, it's at the same point that we do, too, and it comes together seamlessly, giving us a satisfactory ending and bring the murderer to justice. I highly enjoyed this book and can't wait to read the next in the series. Recommended.
More on Kathleen Bridge's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/kathleen-bridge/
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