Sunday, May 22, 2022

Scheduled to Death (A Maggie McDonald Mystery Book 2)

Author:    Mary Feliz
Genre:     Mystery

Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:    9781601836663
Lyrical Underground
236 Pages
$11.65; $1.99 Amazon
January 17, 2017

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Maggie McDonald is hoping to raise the profile of her new Orchard View organizing business via her first high-profile client.  Professor Lincoln Sinclair may be up for a Nobel Prize, but he's hopeless when it comes to organizing anything other than his thoughts.  For an academic, he's also amassed more than his share of enemies.  When Sinclair's fiancée is found dead on the floor of his home laboratory -- electrocuted in a puddle of water -- Maggie takes on the added task of finding the woman's murderer.  To do so, she'll have to outmaneuver the suspicious, obnoxious police investigator she's nicknamed "Detective Awful" before a shadow figure can check off the first item on their personal to-do list -- Kill Maggie McDonald.

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Maggie McDonald and her family moved to Orchard View after a late aunt left her husband a large home and the money he would need to maintain it.  Now, she's starting up her organizing business again in her new town, and she's lucked out by being able to organize the home of Professor Lincoln Sinclair, who will be getting married soon and combining households.  But when she arrives with her realtor friend Tess, they find the body of Lincoln's fiancée, Sarah, electrocuted in a puddle of water.  At first it looks like a horrible accident, but after the police investigate the crime, it's determined to be a murder.

But the man in charge, Detective Apfel, whom Maggie and everyone around her has nicknamed "Detective Awful," is a horrible detective and rubs everyone the wrong way.   He's decided that Linc killed Sarah -- never mind that Linc was nowhere near the crime scene -- and is determined to pin the murder on him.  What can Maggie do but help Linc?  Even though her husband Max wants her to stay out of it, she knows she can't.  Maggie has more than one problem coming her way, and even if she wants to try and just help people, there's someone out there besides the police who doesn't want her help -- the killer...

This is the second book in the series and I must say that I enjoyed it quite much more than the first.  In the first, Maggie's husband was working out of town and I was afraid it was going to be another cozy where the protagonist had her husband gone all the time and she solved murders on her own.  I was pleasantly surprised that Max made more than an appearance in this book, even if he didn't get involved in the investigation as much, he was supportive of his wife, which goes a long way.

Maggie knows that Linc couldn't commit a murder, so she starts looking as to who might have wanted the woman dead.  Or did they?  Since it occurred in Linc's house, maybe he was the target after all?  Could it have been one of the teenagers who worked next door in the gardens?  Or perhaps their supervisor, Boots?

All she knows is that since the detective who would have been on the case, Jason Mueller, is out with a broken leg, and the obnoxious replacement doesn't care about justice, only about closing cases fast.  With Maggie under the gun for time, she needs to find a killer before they find her.

When the ending comes, everything is put together nicely, and we were given a clue to the murderer (I am pleased to say that I was right) but you have to watch for it along the way.  At the end, there is a nice epilogue which puts it all into perspective, and I will read the next in the series.  Recommended.



More on Mary Feliz's Books:    https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/mary-feliz/

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