Fool's Puzzle

First of a new series, this is a suspenseful and twisty mystery with fairly good characters and a good sense of location. Thankfully, the author does not dwell on the charms of the heroine, except that she has beautiful red hair, but she does point out the charms of the hot new police chief who is so obviously smitten with the heroine, Benni. He, as the dutiful policeman, keeps warning her off the case, but leads keep turning up for her and she follows them until she is cornered by the killer but fortunately rescued in the nick of time by the hot police chief. ( )

An excellent mystery. Formulaic, true, but the writing is light and funny, and the lead character is engaging. ( )

Fowler has done a nice job with her first novel. Both the characters and the place are lively and believable. The touch of romance makes the story an appealing light read. ( )

Even though this is a series of cozies, I hadn't read any of them so the main character, Benni Harper was new to me.

Bennie Harper's husband died and she wanted to get away from the ranch from everything that reminded her of him. She would miss the family but now that he was gone, she felt disconnected from them. She needed to get away and start living her own life.

So she took a job as a director of a folk art museum in San Ceclina, California. I really like the setting; I love folk art, especially quilts so the setting made me feel quite at home.

Her cousin, Rita turned down a marriage proposal from a rich Southern guy and moved back to Celina. Rita is impulsive and never thinks things through. She moved in with Marla to share an apartment with her. Marla is a tall and beautiful folk artist that really loves men.

One day, poor Bennie walks in a room to find that Marla was stabbed to death with an awl. Things haven't been going right for Bennie, she has been yearning for the ranch and taking care of the artists and the museum has not been easy. Rita disappears at the same time!

Into the mix walks Police Chief Ortiz who becomes a romantic interest in this story. Benni has a talent for wisecracking; in fact I think she is addicted. But Ortiz seems to understand her better than she does herself. The odd thing is that I liked him more than Bennie. I just couldn’t stand why she didn’t have more common sense and keep getting herself into danger. I thought she was often rude to him. But despite my thoughts he fell for her!

This book has a lot of humor and the mystery has a lot of twists and turns. Solving this mystery did not take a backseat to the development of characters as it does in a lot of cozies.

I would recommend this book to all cozy mystery lovers. ( )

Surprisingly good. There are so many of these gimmick mystery series around that it's always a bit startling when one of them can rise above the norm, but this one does. The characters are complex and the story is good. It's easy to see how this series made it all the way to 15 books.

There's something to be said for the idea that Benni's constant butting of heads with the police makes her foolish, but foolish or not, I think all of her actions were in character. If everyone in the world behaved sensibly all the time there wouldn't be much to write about. ( )