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Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley and Holly Adams (Narrator)
Cloche and Dagger by Jenn McKinlay and Karyn O'Bryant (Narrator)
Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae and Callie Beaulieu (Narrator)
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James by Percival Everett
Murder in a Cape Cottage by Maddie Day and Rachel Dulude (Narrator)
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Running in Flip-Flops From the End of the World by Justin A. Reynolds
The T in LGBT by Jamie Raines
The Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi and Emily Balistrieri (translator)
Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum and John R. Neill
Time After Time by Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat
The Twelve Books of Christmas by Kate Carlisle and Kimberly M. Wetherell (Narrator)
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Witch Hunt by Cate Conte and Amy Melissa Bentley (Narrator)
Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair by Lucy Knisley
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Cloche and Dagger: 07/02/24

Cloche and Dagger

Cloche and Dagger by Jenn McKinlay and Karyn O'Bryant (Narrator) (2013) is the start of the Hat Shop mystery series. I began reading it because of the crossover in Death in the Stacks (2017).

Scarlett Parker is now infamous on social media as the party crasher for tossing cake at her boyfriend when she realized he was still married. To escape notoriety she has left her life in Florida to take up a long offered role as co-owner of Mim's Whims, a haberdashers in London. When she arrives, her cousin is missing and she essentially has to wing it.

For a sizable chunk of this book it seems that the cousin's disappearance will be the mystery that needs solving. Her vanishing is so perfectly timed with Scarlett's arrival to either be a kidnapping or worse, a murder. Don't forget that many proto-cozy series begin with the murder of a shop owning relative!

At about the two third's mark there is in fact a murder. The murder is rather petty and not in keeping with all the other murders I've read by this author. It also has a couple boners of lazy descriptions. The first is the murderer's access to the victim in a house with a full staff. There's no way they'd get in without the housekeeper or butler knowing about it. Second, is the cousin's explanation when she finally returns: namely that she had gone to Africa. Can you be more specific?

The second book is Death of a Mad Hatter (2014).

Four stars

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