Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier

Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier

Mistletoe Murder is the first of the Lucy Stone mysteries, set in the fictional seaside town of Tinker's Cove, Maine. Lucy is mom to three, wife to Bill, and second shift telephone sale rep for the community's biggest employer, Country Cousins. As you can guess from the title, it's Christmastime. While on break one night, Lucy finds her employer, Sam Miller, dead in his car, a murder staged as suicide. But who would want to kill the company's likable boss? Though Lucy is busy with Christmas preparations, she can't resist doing a little investigating of her own. When friendly local policeman, Barney, loses control of his vehicle and ends up in a coma, the stakes rise. What did Barney know that made him a threat to the killer? I like the small town atmosphere. Meier does such a nice job of capturing everyday life, whether that’s working in a call center, everyone in a small town knowing one another, or covering childcare...
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Haunted House Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross

Haunted House Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross

I love seasonal novella collections! Haunted House Murder contains three cozy mystery novellas. Each is part of series, but they all worked well as stand-alones for me. Out of the three, the only one I really enjoyed was Hallowed Out by Barbara Ross. Haunted House Murder, the first in the book, was lacking in a real plot. New people move into town, they're weird, let's all judge them. The amount of time Lucy spent complaining about having to take care of her grandson was annoying and I don't understand why her husband seemed to be incapable of helping at all. The mystery itself wasn't really much of a mystery, just people jumping to conclusions with little to no actual evidence. In Death By Haunted House, new people move into town, they're weird, let's all judge them. And guess, what? They haven't killed anyone either. Sorry, that was a spoiler but not a surprising one. At least this time, there actually was...
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Candy Corn Murder by Leslie Meier

Candy Corn Murder is the first Lucy Stone I've read, even though it's #22 in the series. The cover is just too cute to pass up. That being said, maybe if I had read earlier ones in the series, I would have enjoyed this one more. The author spent a lot of time introducing the characters and getting us involved in the town life. As this was my first time in Tinker's Cove I appreciated it, but I feel like if you had read the others, you might be thinking "get a move on." Of course, I can't tell which are recurring characters and which are new to the series, so maybe it was all necessary. The murder itself and the solution was interesting, as was the reason a certain somebody was against the Halloween festival. I liked seeing Lucy hunt down the clues and put it altogether, but it was a bit rushed. My main problem, though, was I didn't really like...
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