Leave It to Cleaver: 06/09/20

Leave It to Cleaver by Victoria Hamilton is the sixth book in the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series. Jaymie Leighton has been coerced into helping her sister clean out the house of a deceased neighbor. In the basement they find the mummified remains of a girl who had been a friend of Becca's when Jaymie was an infant. She and another girl went missing on the same day and now days apart both their bodies are found.

As has been reiterated in every volume so far, Jaymie is fifteen years younger than her sister. Her sister is a Gen-Xer about my age. Jaymie is a Millennial, eight years younger than my brother. For Jaymie the mid 1980s are as vague and distant as the early 1970s are for me.

The murders, believed to have been two runaways until their bodies were found, took place just after Becca's sixteenth birthday. Although Jaymie is now friends with Becca's childhood friends, she feels awkward asking them to reminisce about a time she can't remember.

The evidence points to the hot headed brother of one of Jaymie's dearest friends. He has since turned his life around and she can't believe he would have been different enough to have committed murder. So she decides to investigate and clear his name.

The setting of the old house filled with junk and bad memories reminds me of the second book in the series, Bowled Over (2013). My one quibble with this volume is that the current murder location was similar enough to be confusing. Some of that confusion is probably due to me listening to an audio while working on other things.

Book seven is No Grater Danger (2018).

Five stars

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