Death By Chocolate (Josiah Reynolds Mystery, #6)

While apparently there was some noise about this being the last of the series, it is not. However, one tory arc that had been going on long enough to start to bore me IS resolved, and that's a very good thing!

At this point, for me the series is more about the relationships of the characters, and the Kentucky setting, than about the mysteries per se. These remained interesting even in the shadow of a fairly twisty plot.

I like that Josiah's mysterious daughter is getting more attention, even when she is something of a deus ex machina in various situations.

If you are reading the series, you will probably like this installment. If not, it's not the place to start.

Ginny Wheelwright begs Josiah Reynolds to help her solve the disappearance of her only son, Dwight. Reluctantly, Josiah delves into Dwight's world of white picket fences and tidy lawns only to discover that it hides dangerous secrets, leading Josiah to the edge of the beautiful and treacherous Cumberland Falls. All the while, O'nan, Josiah's nemesis, plans his revenge. This time he gets really close. So close that someone is going to die. Will it be Josiah?

Very mediocre. Josiah is the main character but it appeared that you really had to read the previous books to follow what was going on and who was who. Dwight was murdered but some crazy former cop also wants to kill Josiah. Not a good book

Ginny Wheelwright begs Josiah Reynolds to help her solve the disappearance of her only son, Dwight. Reluctantly, Josiah delves into Dwight's world of white picket fences and tidy lawns only to discover that it hides dangerous secrets, leading Josiah to the edge of the beautiful and treacherous Cumberland Falls. All the while, O'nan, Josiah's nemesis, plans his revenge. This time he gets really close. So close that someone is going to die. Will it be Josiah?

Jo (Josiah) Reynolds had been an art professor at the University of Kentucky. After her husband took off with a younger woman and people in the art department were trying to prevent her from becoming the department chair, she left academia and began to raise honey bees,
When a friend asked her to help locate her son, Dwight, who had been missing for five months, Jo said she would do what she could. Her son’s wife, wanted him declared dead but the police were reluctant to do that since no body had been found. There was a possibility that he had just taken off for reasons unknown to them.
The plot revolved around where Dwight may have been, who knows what happened to him, his business partner, his wife, and search or non-search for show more him. In addition, someone seems to be stalking Jo.
DEATH BY CHOCOLATE has way too many extremely short chapters. There is a lot of repetition, partly Jo mentally reviewing what she knew and what she needed to learn. There are a lot of references to a serious accident a year previously which now required her to use a cane but the details of the accident, including the reason for it are never given. It would probably have helped had I read some of the previous books in the series.
One section is about a major snow storm that left many people without electricity and made the roads impassable. I would think that people living in an area where that would happen at least once every couple years would be prepared to wait it out, at least for a couple days, rather than panicking within a couple of hours.
The book contains a bit of history of the area. Whitley County was named for William Whitley who built the first brick house in Kentucky around 1800 and altered the sport of horse racing. The course he built had the horses running counter-clockwise, as opposed to the clockwise direction used in England.
Author Abigail Keam states Cumberland Falls has the only Moonbeam Rainbow in the western hemisphere although a google search revealed a couple others in the US which are not as spectacular.
The story plods along and lacks depth. show less