Sara M. Barton

This is the first book in a cozy mystery series set in Vermont, which pairs a cozy mystery author with a seasoned detective in solving a series of murders of people connected to a jazz music summer camp program several year ago.

Cozy mysteries are not known for accurate portrayals of police procedure, but this one is hands down the worst depiction of how a cop might handle murder cases in terms of both what he might want to do and what he legally could do. Mindbogglingly inappropriate. Still, show more the "whodunit" puzzle is reasonably good, and oddly enough, Maggie/Selena/Agatha/Mary (she has a lot of pseudonyms) and Smitty the detective are very likeable.

It was a pleasant read, but I just can't get past the Fantasy Island police procedure. show less

Miz Scarlet Wilson is an innkeeper. After financial losses including getting caught in a Ponzi scheme, she has turned the family mansion into a destination inn for those who are handicapped or in need of medical care. But when a very suspicious guest is found dead, Scarlet finds out that she is in the middle of long-range and deadly plot.

There is a lot of family background to begin this story which introduces ancestors and tells the family history. Currently, Scarlet is living with her show more mother, her mother's cousin, and her twice-divorced brother Bur. There are also a variety of guests at the inn.

Bur's friend and Scarlet's teenage crush is now a security professional who has been called in to look into the disappearance of a family from another of Scarlet's family's home. He is also interested in investigating where the family money has gone.

The plot was a little bit all over the place. Things happened very quickly and involved a couple of Scarlet's old boyfriends who had a definite agenda for dating her. I thought the story tried to do too much. Plot twists kept appearing and making things more complicated. Then the story ended without really resolving a lot of the issues.

While I enjoyed Scarlet's snarkiness, I didn't enjoy her relationship with her brother which seemed too juvenile for people in their late 40s and early 50s. Bur comes across as a juvenile prankster instead of a the well-respected professional that he should have been. I did like the budding romance between Scarlet and Bur's friend but thought it got too little page time. show less

Linda, a retired CIA chemical expert, has been installed in hospice care at our reclusive Vermont B&B. Thoroughly disagreeable, it appears she has scores to settle as she mischievously waits out her days. Seeing as the B&B is run by Ben, a retired CIA agent and his wife, Bea, the place is soon overrun by assorted spooks and bad guys. What is Linda's plan? Will she succeed in blackmailing her lovely Jamaican nurse? Can Ben and Bea protect the young Syrian girls in their care? Whatever show more happened to the Russian bad guy? More enjoyable, to me, than the first installment, was our author hitting her stride and finding a more consistent voice. Bea's inappropriate whining still irritates me. (It's not as if she didn't know he was a CIA agent when she married him. She's surprised he has secrets he has to keep?) Nevertheless, this has been toned down a bit from the earlier book. Plenty left to keep us guessing through the next several installments. (A copy of this book was provided in exchange for an honest review.)

Edited to add: I have gone back and re-read Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing", the main characters of which are the basis for Bea and Ben. Having looked again at the interaction of the two in the original, I feel I should be much more forgiving of their re-imagined iteration as married innkeepers. Barton does a credible job of capturing their interplay -- playful, lustful and biting. I am adding a star to my review. show less

Sydney has recently married Henry Hartman, er ... Kimbal or any of the other alias names her new husband works under, you see Henry is a tongue-in-cheek FBI agent. Syd has had a rough time of marriage, since her first was to a mobsters son whom she put through dental school at her own expense. For her trouble her ex tried to have her murdered to collect on the insurance... but now, Henry has saved her and bought her a cute dog to boot--or has he? To answer; the couple romp through a series show more of hilarious compromisingly dangerous situations that are a laugh a minute. I thoroughly enjoyed the art of comedy painted by the author as she colors each event in sharp evocative and truly funny prose. I will be reading more from this author. show less