Shelley Costa

Equal parts of The Da Vinci Code and chick-lit cozy, A Killer’s Guide to Good Works, the second in Shelly Costa’s Val Cameron series, annoyed me to start. The premise that makes Dan Brown’s monster hit so silly — a rogue Catholic secret society murders in order to protect secret religious knowledge — doesn’t sound less silly here.

That’s no spoiler. Costa introduces the motive in the first few pages of her book. But despite my reservations, the book grew on me, although I show more didn’t like it as much as I did Costa’s Practical Sins for Cold Climates, which first introduces Valjean “Val” Cameron, a senior editor at a boutique publishing house. Despite the dubious premise, Costa gradually drew me in with her clever pacing and colorful characters. A few twists in the end elevated A Killer’s Guide to Good Works to a well-deserved four stars.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Henery Press in exchange for an honest review. show less

Take Candace Bushnell’s Carrie Bradshaw, transplant her to a Canadian version of the TV show Northern Exposure, and saddle her with a two-year-old unsolved murder and a soupçon of chick-lit romance, and you have Practical Sins for Cold Climates. I should have hated this, right? But somehow author Shelley Costa pulls it off magnificently.

Even as a fellow New Yorker, I found Valjean “Val” Cameron, a Donna Karan-clad senior editor at a boutique publishing house, initially annoying, a show more woman whose comfort zone is so tiny that she sees living without Carnegie Deli, a Starbucks specialty espresso coffee, and high-count Egyptian cotton sheets as roughing it. However, as Val encounters hardships in the Canadian North Woods that she couldn’t have even imagined back in her apartment on East 51st Street in Manhattan, I admired her surprising integrity and resolve. While a widowed bush pilot of sorts, Wade Decker, is thrown in as a love interest, the romance took a back seat to Val’s voyage of personal discovery and her quest to find out what really happened to Leslie Selkirk Decker that October day when someone threw her out of a second-story window at the summer camp that her family had established on Lake Wendaban at the turn of the 20th century. Not that romance aficionados won’t enjoy the tanned, sexy Wade Decker. A light-hearted mystery that provides a surprising and subtle argument on being true to yourself. I loved my time spent at Lake Wendaban and in the Canadian North Woods with the spunky, intelligent Val. This must be what chick-lit for the thinking woman looks like.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Henery Press in exchange for an honest review. show less

Val Cameron was trying to advance her career in literary publishing. When her boss,
Peter Hathaway, sent her to northern Ontario to get an author to sign a contract. She wasn’t happy about the assignment but felt she had to go. A previous contract with an author with what turned out to be a major skeleton in the closet made it imperative to get this one done. The company really needed the money. And, after all, it would only be a quick fly in-fly out trip.
A New Yorker through and show more through, she didn’t exactly prepare for the different environment and her designer shoes and clothes showed what she expected to happen, not what actually happened.
The town was very isolated in a beautiful area. She quickly found the people she needed to reach the author, Charlie Cable, but learned that he came in only once a month to get his mail but had just left. She went to get settled into Hathaway’s cottage then went to find someone to help her reach Cable at his home. She found Wade Decker, a handsome, rugged pilot and outdoorsman. Decker had a history: His wife’s body had been found on the rocks outside their home two years earlier. There were rumors that she had been killed and that she had committed suicide. Decker refused to talk about it.
Leslie Selkirk Decker, it turned out, was a beautiful woman who was very much disliked by almost everyone. The camp that her family owned for many years had been failing and there was interest in buying the land for development. That made her a possible target for several people.
Her inquiries led to Cable being the killer, but if he was, what would that mean both if he signed the contract and if he didn’t?
The book is well-written with well developed characters, subtle humor, and sharp observation: For example, for her first ride in a floatplane “Val threw on her sunglasses so he couldn’t tell her eyes were squeezed shut, and she concentrated on not stiffening herself into a complete plank....” I did not expect the ending.
Interesting comments:
“No matter where you went on the planet...someone would be having a meeting.”
“On the whole, pain was a damn sight better than fear.”
“Whenever she thought she was being winsome the average male still needed a secret decoder ring.”
This is the first of a three-book series. I’m looking forward to reading more about Val’s adventures. show less

'Practical Sins for Cold Climates' is not the typical Henery Press adorable cozy mystery, yet I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The story is very well written, uncomfortable, haunting at times, and, eventually, honest.

Valjean Cameron, the leading lady of the book, is a senior editor at a New York City based publishing company. Due to her ‘complicated’ relationship with her boss, she is sent to a small settlement on a remote lake in Canada to sign a best-selling author. Being a city girl show more through and through, she is immediately terrorized by what is considered everyday life to the residents. She encounters misery after hardship after misery, and her reactions are hilarious.

I felt like Val was fighting with her own vision of herself. She starts off timid, and she stubbornly wants to appear self-reliant. As the book progressed, she realizes that accepting herself and doing what she really feels is right, though difficult, is important and worth doing. This book reads as longer than typical cozies because it needs to, for honest character evolution. The mystery has a very satisfying conclusion.

I am a big fan of the Henery Press cozies, and I am happy to see that they are broadening their scope, while maintaining a high level of quality. This is the first book I have read by Shelley Costa, and I am very impressed. Also, I am especially interested in any further books featuring Valjean.

**eARC netgalley** show less