A Wytch's Book Review Blog

Forests, Fishing, & Forgery (A Camper & Criminals Cozy #3) by Tonya Kappes

Welcome to Normal, Kentucky~ where nothing is normal.

It's Labor Day weekend in Normal, and if you know anything about camping and RVing, you know it's one of the busiest times of the year. Unfortunately, Daniel Boone National Park is in danger of being closed due to a drought and local businesses are scrambling for ideas to survive a possible shutdown.

Happy Trails Campground is at the center of a murder in which campers as well locals are suspects. It looks likely that a local resident is responsible for the dastardly deed since the victim is the one person who had the power to shut down the national park, which would be devastating to Normal’s small businesses.

It is coming up the the Labor Day weekend, the campground is pretty well full, with one group (oddly) not being a family group but a group of young men on a stag/batchelor weekend, everything SHOULD be running smoothly, but there are rumours that a drought will shut the adjacent national park down, which of course means that Happy Trails would close and this would then knock on to the businesses in Normal.  Still everything seems to be running well until the groom to be gets rather drunk and has an argument with one of the local rangers, a ranger that Mae finds dead just of one of the trails the following day!  Oh and just to add to the problems the groom has gone missing (as has a local white collar prison inmate), even this wouldn't be too bad until Mae goes to meet a local reporter and finds her shot through the head!

Now Mae, the Laundry Club ladies and Hank Sharp (the local detective) need to figure out what has happened to who, why and when if Normal is ever going to have normality!

A Cajun Christmas Killing (Cajun Country Mystery #3) by Ellen Byron

Maggie Crozat is back home in bayou country during the most magical time of the year. In Pelican, Louisiana, Christmastime is a season of giant bonfires on the levee, zydeco carols, and pots of gumbo. Except, this year, the Grinch has come to stay at the family-run Crozat Plantation B&B. When he floods travel websites with vicious reviews, Maggie thinks she’s identified him as rival businessman Donald Baxter. That is, until he’s found stabbed to death at Maggie’s workplace. And Maggie and her loved ones become top suspects.

The Crozats quickly establish alibis, but Maggie’s boyfriend, Detective Bo Durand, remains under suspicion. With Bo sidelined during the investigation, Maggie finds herself forced to work with an unlikely ally: longtime family enemy Rufus Durand. Her sleuthing uncovers more suspects than drummers drumming, and lands her in the crosshairs of the murderer.

The sleigh bells are jingling, and the clock is ticking for Maggie and Rufus, who must catch the killer or it will be the opposite of a Joyeux Noël.

Christmas, a time of goodwill to all men ..... or (sadly) a time for a Troll to try and smear the Crozat Plantation B&B, a time for murder and a time for the Ghost of Christmas Past to arrive in the form of Maggie's ex from New York. 

Something is not right with Tug Crozat (Maggie's Dad), when he collapses at the building of the Christmas Eve bonfire (which, by the way, takes from Thanksgiving to prepare!), in the hospital (where it turns out his blood pressure is way too high), he admits that there could be a problem with the keeping the plantation, someone is muscling in and trying to take over PPC (this is a company that Tug's twin brother is part of, they rescue old buildings and turn them into hotels etc - Crozat has become part of their portfolio in order to get some ready cash for repairs), Tig is being forced out by Steve Harmon of Harmon Equities, and the same thing seems to have happened before.  If Tig is right and Harmon takes over the Crozat's will be out of their family home before you can say HO HO HO.

When Maggie gets home from the hospital she has one of the guests complaining, she has to head to work at Doucet where that has been a change at the top and a new manager (Tannis) seems determined to ruin everything.  But nothing can ruin things as fast as Maggie taking a tour round (trying not to gag at the badly written script for a Living History Tour that Tannis wrote) and discovering Donald Baxter aka Steve Harmon dead as a doornail in one of the rooms!

Now Maggie has to team up with Rufus Durand (who seems to have had a sea change and no longer hates the Crozats) to find out who killed Harmon (Bo is off the case) and make sure that Crozat Plantation survives to see another Christmas.

Killing in C Sharp (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries #3) by Alexia Gordon

She saved Carraigfaire—but can she save her friends?

Gethsemane Brown fought off an attack by a sleazy hotel developer who wanted to turn her Irish cottage into a tourist trap. Now she must face a vengeful ghost determined to exact revenge for her murder centuries ago.

This ghost’s wrath spares no one—not Gethsemane’s students, Inspector Niall O’Reilly, fellow teacher Frankie Grennan, or a group of ghost hunters descended on Dunmullach to capture proof ghosts exist.

Proof Gethsemane has to quash to keep Eamon, her resident ghost and friend, from becoming an internet sensation.

As if a spiteful specter wasn’t bad enough, a crooked music reviewer turns up dead in the opera house orchestra pit, a famous composer is arrested for the crime, and Gethsemane must team up with a notorious true-crime author to clear his name.

If she doesn’t, friends will die, a ghost she cares about will never know peace, and she’ll star in a final act gruesome enough for any opera.

Gethsemene should be able to relax after the stress she has gone through recently, but nothing is ever that straight forward! Her landlord has another money making scheme and this involves a group of TV ghost hunters coming to search for Eamon (if they get proof her and Eamon's life/afterlife will never be the same), one of the team has a fascination with a creepy story from Eastern Europe and she is really happy (in a macabre way) to find out that a local composer has written an opera about it.  Apparently the ghost in this tale has serious vengeance issues and will kill first born sons and anyone who tries to make money out of her death.

This would all be well and good, only Maga isn't just a tale, she is a real, very vengeful spirit and before long boys from her class, Frankie (the maths teacher), Niall (the Garda Inspector) and Hardy (one of the TV team) are laid up with an unexplained, very nasty disease.  Oh and add in the fact that there has been a murder (granted the corpse was an unpleasant so and so but even HE didn't deserve that!) and the composer of the opera Aed is suspect number 1!

Now Gethsemene has a house guest and partner in seeking out the truth of the crime, and she needs Eamon's help to get rid of the spirit, the downside is it may take him down as well.