Sweet Nothing Lingerie Mystery #1
Meg London
Berkley
Sept 2012/ ISBN 978-0-425-25157-7
Mystery/Cozy
Amazon
Reviewed
by Laura Hinds
In the debut
novel of the Sweet Nothings Lingerie Mystery series, Emma Taylor
has left New York to return to the small town of Paris, Tennessee.
There she will nurse her broken heart while helping her aunt, Arabella,
revamp her lingerie shop, “Sweet Nothings.”
As Emma works
on a business plan, her ex-boyfriend, Guy, who broke her heart into
a million little pieces, blows into town to try to woo her back.
He’s even arranged a job interview for her with a big-time
fashion house back in NYC. Emma is tempted and agrees to meet Guy
for dinner the following night. The dinner date falls apart before
it begins when Emma finds Guy getting cozy at the restaurant with
one of the models she believed he’d been fooling around with
back in NYC.
If that isn’t
bad enough, early the next morning Emma wakes with a start when
she hears screaming. She goes down to the shop and finds a distraught
Arabella there. Guy is on the rug at Sweet Nothings, and he is most
decidedly dead, murdered, in fact. Given their history, and where
Guy was found, Emma becomes Suspect #1. Since the rude police officer
in charge of the case seems disinclined to dig any deeper, Emma
and Arabella, along with Emma’s friend Liz and NYC friend
Kate, decide to investigate on their own.
This is a nice
out-of-the-gate effort by Meg London. I’m happy to report
that the protagonist, Emma, was usually smart enough to let others
know what she was up to, rather than going blindly alone into danger
as many cozies are written these days. Yet for me anyway, the mystery
was never really a mystery. I knew immediately who the killer would
be before the first murder even happened. Yes, there was a second
killing. While the other characters in the story had potential for
wonderful quirkiness, their quirks were hinted at but not entirely
fleshed out. The promise of a new romance for Emma, and her high-school
heartthrob Brian, stalled too. I have high hopes for this series
though, and would love to see the quirks and romance come to fruition
in the next book, and that the murder itself will be more cleverly
plotted.
Reviewer Note: author also writes as Peg Cochran.
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