Bedeviled Eggs: 07/24/19

Bedeviled Eggs by Laura Childs is the third of the Cackleberry Club mysteries. This book wastes no time in producing a body. It actually happens right in front of everyone — a crossbow arrow through the heart.

The timing of events is my ongoing issue with the books in this series. Save for the Detective Green series which is more police procedural than mystery, most mysteries I read save their murder for page fifty or so. The long winded ones might wait until page one hundred.

The problem with killing of a character before the end of chapter one is that we have one very short exchange of dialog to learn that he's a mayor candidate, that the current mayor is probably corrupt. There is no chance to see Chuck Peebler interact with other people or to overhear arguments or other motives for his murder.

The remainder of the book, some three hundred pages worth, is nothing but the three Cackleberry women working at their shop and in their spare time, investigating every thread no matter how tenuous the lead. Mostly though the book is padded with too many characters and too many red herrings.

The conclusion ends up coming as close to the end of the book as the murder did the beginning. The murderer ends up being a completely unmemorable person who had a flimsy motive. The murderer seeing the end of the novel rapidly approaching decides to confess to the crime.

The fourth book if I'm so inclined to keep going is Stake & Eggs (2012)

Two stars

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