Genre: Mystery
Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780999068847
Cinnamon & Sugar Press
302 Pages
$9.99; $.99 Amazon
September 19, 2020
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Cupcake caterer Emory Martinez is hosting a Halloween bash alongside her octogenarian employer, Tillie. With guests dressed in elaborate costumes, the band is rocking, the cocktails are flowing, and tempers are flaring when the hired Bavarian Barmaid tries to hook a rich, hapless husband. Except one of her targets happens to be Emory's brother-in-law, which bodes ill for his pregnant wife. When Emory tracks down the distraught barmaid, instead of finding the young woman in tears, she finds her dead. Can she explain to the new detective on the scene why the Bavarian Barmaid was murdered in Emory's bathtub with Emory's Poison Apple Cake Pops stuffed into her mouth?
With an angry pregnant sister to contend with, she promises to clear her brother-in-law's name. As Emory starts asking questions and tracking down the identity of the costumed guests, she finds reasons to suspect her brother-in-law has been hiding a guilty secret. Her search leads her to a web of blackmail and betrayal amongst the posh setting of the local country club crowd. Can Emory sift through the lies she's being told and find the killer? She'll need to step up her investigation before another victim is sent to the great pumpkin patch in the sky.
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Emory Martinez is trying to recover from a nasty and harrowing divorce, where she was once accused of murder. Now she lives in the poolhouse of octogenarian Tillie Skyler, as her cook and companion, also doing Tillie's son, David's, bookkeeping and correspondence.
Tillie is throwing a Halloween party for friends, and Emory's sister is catering it with Emory providing the desserts. Everything seems to be going smoothly until the buxom barmaid starts harassing people - especially Emory's brother-in-law, Thomas. But after an altercation, Emory finds the barmaid, Mandy, dead in her bathtub in the poolhouse. Now Thomas is a suspect and her sister begs her to help find the killer. As if that isn't bad enough, David comes homes with a new twenty-something wife, angering David's grown sons Theodore and Brian, and the new wife, Barbara, makes some changes that could endanger Emory's job and the sons.
But Emory soon finds that there's more to the story: Barbara could have some ties to the dead woman, and there are secrets and lies that abound everywhere. When things escalate, Emory doesn't know whether to stop Tillie from investigating or help her. Either way, it could get her killed anyway...
This is the second book in the series and I enjoyed it just as much as the first. While I didn't really care for the fact that Emory constantly denigrated herself - she seems insecure about her looks but doesn't do anything about it - I ignored this to really dig into the story.
The murder is almost immediate and while we don't get to know Mandy at all beforehand, we learn an awful lot about her afterward when Tillie and Emory start questioning the people who knew her. Tillie is a much better interrogator, since she doesn't come right out and ask people if they killed her; but the two make a decent pair together, with Emory watching out for the elderly woman.
There's also a new detective in town who wants to like Emory for personal reasons (not what you think) but doesn't know her and can't rule her out any more than anyone else. They clash a little bit, but I do like the fact that Detective O'Neill isn't harsh with her and doesn't treat her badly. I really detest the 'bad cop' in books where the detective is trying to put the protagonist in jail.
Having just getting to know David's sons, I do like Brian quite a bit and hope to see more of him while Theodore comes off as pretentious; still, it will be interesting to see how they progress in further books in this series.
When things escalate, and I won't say how, it changes the game for everyone, and Emory finds herself in the middle of a real pickle without knowing what direction to go in. It gives the story a bit of intrigue to it, and makes you want to keep reading to find the outcome. When we do discover the killer it comes as a complete surprise, and that was indeed worth reading. Recommended.
More on Kim Davis's Books: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089MG9YTF?searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt
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