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Tish
Tarragon has been asked to cater for retirement community
Coleton Creek’s annual garden awards. Residents are
not happy that the same person wins every year, and that the
lucky winner is the least liked member. Sloane Shakleford
is a wealthy man who delights in upsetting people any way
he can, so not many tears are shed when he is found battered
to death with a spade in his lawn chair. There is no shortage
of suspects, and Tish finds herself getting involved in her
second case.
I do love a good cozy mystery, and
this is shaping up to be an entertaining series If you are
new to the genre this is a classic example, featuring as it
does an amateur sleuth with an interesting job (catering),
an animal (bichon frise), love interest (attorney) and a closed
community with secrets. It manages to avoid what I consider
some of the least appealing features of the genre, namely,
overly zany characters, more romance than mystery and impossibly
far-fetched events.
Tish
is in her late forties with a gay assistant and neither pets
nor relations, so is fairly atypical. The catering takes a
back seat to the sleuthing, which constitutes most of the
plot – another big thumbs up from me for that. Despite
all the suspects, I didn’t have much trouble working
out whodunit but enjoyed reading about a set of well described
characters I cared about in an appealing setting. This is
only the second in the series, so it has not amassed much
of the sort of history between the characters that longer
series gather, but more than one of Tish’s friends and
helpers has a problem to work out that will be carried over
into the next book. I will certainly want to read it.
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