Halloween Murder (Two Lucy Stone Mysteries #3 and #16)

Author:  Leslie Meier
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781496721587; 9781496718341
Kensington Publishing
496 Pages
$7.99; $9.99; $7.59 Amazon
August 28, 2018

⭐⭐⭐

Trick or Treat Murder

While Lucy Stone is whipping up orange-frosted cupcakes for her town's annual Halloween festival, an arsonist is on the loose in Tinker's Cove.  When arson turns into murder, a little digging in all the wrong places puts Lucy too close to a shocking discover that could send all her best-laid plans up in smoke...

Wicked Witch Murder

Not everyone in Tinker's Cove is enchanted with newcomer Diana Ravenscroft and her quaint little shop offering everything from jewelry to psychic readings.  But a gruesome murder of Diana's friend has Lucy Stone uncovering a deadly web of secrets - and a spine-chilling brush with the things that go bump in the night...

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This is a compilation of two of two Lucy Stone Mysteries: Trick or Treat Murder  and Wicked Witch Murder.  If you've read the Lucy Stone Mysteries, then these will fall right in line.

In the first mystery, Lucy is still a youngish mother with her four children; Zoe is a newborn baby, so the other children are still young.  When there's a house fire at a home that Lucy's husband Bill restored that belonged to a client, Lucy is sad.  But not as sad as when Lucy and Bill discover that someone they knew and cared about was in the home and died there.  While it at first appears to be an accident because of the home's age, it soon becomes apparent that it was arson when other old buildings are being set aflame.  And when Lucy starts getting closer to discovering who's doing the nasty deed, she unknowingly puts herself in danger and just might not survive...

In the second book Lucy goes to see a witch with her friends for a group reading.  When what the woman tells her starts to come true, Lucy, a skeptic, still doesn't want to believe it.  Not even when she comes across a burned body in the woods that leaves her shaken.  She gets to the point that she forbids the woman from encouraging her sixteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth.  Then a local woman dies, and the stakes are raised.  If Lucy isn't careful, hers might be the next body to be found...

I read this dual mystery book because I love to "read the season," as it were, and these take place at Halloween.  I have to say that I enjoyed the first mystery; the second, not so much.  It seemed to me that in the first, the writing was crisp and had a flair to it; but in the second, it all seemed so tired, almost as if it had aged along with Lucy.  Unfortunately, I found this to be so in another Halloween mystery she wrote later than these two.

But the storyline in the first was interesting to me and the characters involved kept me wondering which one of them was an arsonist.  There were plenty of people to choose from, and several of them could have been the guilty party.  When the murderer was discovered, it came as rather a surprise, which was indeed a good thing.  I did like the ending immensely as everything came together nicely.

In the second book I was bored almost from the beginning.  I found the character of Diana completely unlikable, and if you don't like a character that's quite a major one in the book, you probably won't enjoy it, and that was the problem for me.  Because of her, I couldn't wait for the book to end and really didn't care 'whodunit.'  So this book was a no-go for me, and the reason I only gave the entire thing three stars.

So, in the end, this two-book novel is worth reading if you're a Lucy Stone fan or if you've never read the series before; but you can draw your own conclusions to them both.

https://www.amazon.com/Halloween-Murder-Lucy-Stone-Mystery/dp/1496721586/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3625535598

More on Leslie Meier's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/leslie-meier/

Tippy Toe Murder (Lucy Stone Mysteries #2)

Author:  Leslie Meier
Genre:   Mystery

Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781575663920
Kensington Publishing
256 Pages
Various Prices; $6.89 Digital; Amazon
September 1, 1996

⭐⭐

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Tippy-Murder-Lucy-Stone-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00KYUNERW/ref=

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3243117636

More on Leslie Meier's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/leslie-meier/