Upcoming New Release and Traditional Mystery Review

UPCOMING NEW RELEASE and TRADITIONAL MYSTERY REVIEW

In a previous blog entry, I talked about the difference between a cozy mystery and a traditional mystery. I love them both and currently write a cozy mystery series.

I have a new release in my own series that will be out at the end of August. Book 5 in the Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery series is set in Destin, Florida. Lily Gayle and her best friend, Dixie, leave their small Mississippi town of Mercy and head to the Gulf Coast in search of a fun girl’s weekend. But, trouble soon follows not only during the road trip to Florida, but also when a dead man is discovered on the beach and Lily Gayle is the last person known to have been with him. As Lily Gayle and Dixie struggle to prove Lily Gayle’s innocence in the crime, people staying at the condo building come out of the woodwork to accuse Lily Gayle of being the criminal. Don’t miss the next installment in the Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery series!

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Traditional Mystery Review

I have had a life-long love of traditional mysteries, in addition to cozy mysteries, and one of my very favorite traditional mystery authors is Louise Penny. She is the author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series set in Canada. Talk about your layered mystery series! Louise weaves a wonderful backstory across her series that keeps you loving and rooting for her characters personal lives as much as you root for them in solving the crime found in each individual book!

Book Blurb:

When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Surete du Quebec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder.

None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane?

When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing.

But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing.

The investigation into what happened six months ago -- the events that led to his suspension -- has dragged on, into the dead of winter. And while most of the opioids he allowed to slip through his hands, in order to bring down the cartels have been retrieved there is one devastating exception.

Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers.

As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve the drug, Armand Gamache begins to see his own blind spots. And the terrible things hiding there.

Review:

I am in a major time crunch due to the upcoming release of my own new book, plus plotting a story for a Christmas cozy mystery anthology and a novella combining a character from one of my favorite cozy authors into one of my own stories.

All that being said, I could not put this book down. I have loved this series from the beginning, but I am so invested in these characters that when I picked up this book to 'read just a couple of chapters' I found myself reading far longer than I should have under the circumstances.

This story is so nuanced, building on Ganache's recent past he is struggling to come to terms wth and melding it beautifully into the current mystery. Even the snowstorm at the very beginning of the story becomes an allegory of all of the things certain characters are unable to see in their own lives. All of my favorite characters are here jumping off the pages and into my living room as though they are real and the culmination of the mystery was one I did not guess before the end. A very satisfying read!


Thank you for stopping by to read my entry into the Suspense Sisters blog! I hope you enjoyed it and that you will follow me on Amazon or Bookbub...or both!


I am giving away FIVE ebook copies of Death on the Beach to readers who comment below by Sunday, August 25, 2019. Please leave your email address so that I can reach out to you. The ebook copies will be sent out to winners after September 1, 2019.