Something Read, Something Dead: 07/23/19

Something Read, Something Dead by Eva Gates is the fifth Lighthouse Library mystery. It's set in the Bodie Island lighthouse — though in read life it's not a library nor is it large enough to be one. The author acknowledges this discrepancy in her afterword, saying that her version is the TARDIS version of the real thing. Fair enough.

Lucy's cousin Josie is getting married in about a month. She and her fiancé wants it simple and informal. They haven't done a lot of planning and don't feel the need to.

Word, though, gets down to Josie's New Orleans relatives and all hell breaks loose. Her Grandmother arrives with a bunch of people in tow to do a "proper" job of wedding planning. By proper she means old fashioned and expensive.

Given how terrible grandma Gloria was, I expected her to die. Instead, it's Miranda, one of the co-wedding coordinators. Her special good at the bridal shower is poisoned. Josie is the prime suspect and Lucy has to do everything she can to clear her cousin's name.

This particular volume is at the other extreme of cozy mystery timing. While most cozies kill off their victim around page fifty, giving about two hundred pages of sleuthing, and another twenty-five or pages of climax and epilog. This volume, though, is roughly two-thirds wedding planning and one third mystery.

As the book is in a well established series, the odd pacing and light emphasis on the mystery didn't bothered me. Frankly I enjoyed the wedding planner from hell hijinks.

The sixth book in the series is Read and Buried which comes out in October 2019.

Five stars

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