Lethal in Old Lace by Duffy Brown - #review

Reagan Summerside returns in national bestselling author Duffy Brown’s fifth Consignment Shop mystery, now for the first time in hardcover.

There are two social functions in Savannah guaranteed to get people talking: weddings and funerals. And just as consignment shop owner Reagan Summerside agrees to marry the hunky Walker Boone, her neighbors, sisters Annie Fritz and Elsie Abbot, step up their business as professional mourners. They are so successful that the Sleepy Pines Retirement Center has hired them as a part of their retirement package. But the celebration over good business is cut short when the residents at Pines suddenly begin dying at an alarming rate. And the sisters are the first suspects.


Reagan has her doubts, however, and begins to look into the strange phenomenon. But then something even stranger happens: a body winds up in the sisters’ pink Caddy. The evidence begins to pile up and the suspicious case of Willie Fishbine, who swindled the sisters out of a fortune and coincidentally died prior to the Pines case, is reopened.

Not wanting Willie to be buried until they can find the killer responsible for the murders, Reagan must catch the culprit in time to walk down the aisle.

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MY REVIEW

I've read many, many cozy mysteries since I started this reading challenge and book tour extravaganza that ha been the last 3+ years of my life.  Now most cozies are part of a series, and most of the time there is a love interest for the main character.  They meet, don't get along at first, then bond and all looks like they are headed to the church.  In few series if any, have I so regretted not havng read the previous installments.  Lethal in Old Lace read perfectly well as a standalone - but I think history can enrich the present, like turning what seems like a nice big house and grounds in the South to a former plantation where slaves worked.

How cool to set a series, though, in a consignment shop..  I think you probably have a better chance of finding vintage clothing at a consignment shop than at a thrift store, and vintage is some people's obsession. For instance, my family received a floor-length black velvet cape (w/cream silk lining) from the daughter of a pianist who wore it when she performed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair - in front of Theodore Roosevelt, no less.  (My, I do tend to stray, don't I?)

Reagan is a determined woman, Walker is some serious man candy (pralines couldn't hold a candle to him), and the the sisters, Annie Fritz and Elsie Abbot are a humorous look into my probably future.  I don't have any sister, but am quite capable of of taking on the role of a couple of ladies who reminded me of the Baldwin sisters on The Waltons.

There are so many interesting and entertaining tidbits peppered throughout the book, it's like eating a bowl of the world's best gumbo - tasty, entertaining and ultimately very satisfying.

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MEET THE AUTHOR

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While others girls dreamed of dating Brad Pitt, Duffy Brown longed to take Sherlock Holmes to the prom. Today she conjures up who-done-it stories for Berkley Prime Crime and has two series, the national bestselling Consignment Shop Mysteries  set in Savannah and the Cycle Path Mysteries on Mackinac Island.

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(Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book from the author and publishers via Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

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This book helps me fulfill the following 2018 reading challenges:

2018 52 Books in 52 Weeks (original)

2018 52 Books in 52 Weeks (v2) (book published this year)

2018 Daily Positive Winter RC (a murder mystery)

2018 PopSugar RC - (book published in 2018)

2018 Cloak and Dagger RC