Murder by Numbers (2008)

The seacost town of Maiden’s Bay, Oregon is inundated with movie people while the movie Counterfeit is being filmed there. When Oliver Chissel, president/CEO of Mirage Productions, is found dead on the beach, it isn’t a matter of determining who had a motive to kill him. Rather, police are left to determine which of the many people who disliked the little toad had the means and opportunity to do the deed. Our heroine Liza Kelly’s PR client, Jenny Robbins, who is making her movie debut in Counterfeit, is one of the suspects.

In between protecting her client from both police and a hack director, and writing her sudoku column for the Oregon Daily, Liza has her hands full. Her estranged husband Michael is in town, living next door to Liza and being a real pest. Plus the mayor of Maiden’s Bay … a friend of Liza’s current beau Kevin Shepard … wants Liza to advise him on dealing with the Hollywood types who threaten the town’s big construction project when the film folks overstay their welcome.

Murder by Numbers is not the world’s most realistic cozy series. But it’s a fun read with a lively cast of characters, a plot that moves along nicely, and a resolution that ties up all the loose ends. So, I found myself going with the flow and not worrying about reality rearing its ugly head. Thanks to the author’s first Liza Kelly mystery and the sudoku tips she provided, I’m a regular sudoku solver – moving from beginner to advanced in just five months. Thank you, Kaye Morgan!

By Diana. First published in Mystery News, Feb-Mar 2008 issue.

Review based on publisher- or author-provided review copy. ( )

2nd in the Sudoku Mysteries series. Liza is a publicist and a sudoku passionate, who after getting tired of Hollywood life decided to go back to the small town where she grew up, Maiden's Bay. Jenny is a young actress, represented by Liza, who had a really bad experience in Mayden's Bay, experience a director is set to use to give more dimension to her interpretation in a movie that is filmed in part in Mayden's Bay. Liza will have to use all her talents to help Jenny when one of the movie's major is found dead...

Liza write a column on sudoku in the local newspaper and one of these columns is provided at the beginning of each chapter of the book, which I enjoy. I enjoyed the first book in this series, but this time, the fun was not as present. I thougt some of the characters were weak (I guess playing with somebody's head is not easy to render in a cozy book than the author taught) and I had a hard time with the end of the book (not the solution itself, but rather how the guilty was outed by Liza). I will probably check for the third at the library anyway. I gave it a weak 3.5. ( )