Boxes in the Basement: 04/25/25

Boxes in the Basement by Kathi Daley and Angel Clark (Narrator) (2018) is the start of the Inn at Holiday Bay mystery series. Abby Sullivan has bought a huge house at the edge of Holiday Bay, Maine, which she plans to convert into an inn. Helping her are Rufus, a Maine Coon cat; Georgia, a drifter; and a dog, Ramos.

In the early days of moving in, Abby hears about a murder of a local. And then she hears about two other deaths and a missing person. All four women have ties to boxes of photographs Abby has found in the basement of her new home.

Abby, who is a mystery writer herself, jumps to the expected conclusion: the four women are all victims of the same person. It's the sort of conclusion a regular reader of mysteries is trained to come to.

But this series seems to bent on breaking with well established conventions and tropes. That's fine but it does make this series seem more like cozy fiction with hints of mystery and romance without really settling on either one as its main genre.

What I like about this initial offering is the slower pace of things. The story unfolds over a number of months, rather than days as is more typical. I like how Abby is happy to do things at her own pace and at her own terms.

The one thing that bothers me is the mood whiplash that the audiobook presents the reader. Abby has come to this junction in her life because of a tragic accident that killed her husband and infant son. She is still grieving but she's starting to come out of the worst of it. She is still a young woman (from the perspective of this 50+ year old reader) so the choice of a young sounding narrator makes sense.

But! The woman performing the book has a really weird way of stressing words in sentences. She often up-speaks things that really don't need it. Abby will be talking through her grief and the narrator makes her sound like she's a high school cheer leader.

The short version is: this first volume is a break with recent mystery trends. It's ambitious in how it's trying to be different and authentic. It doesn't quite succeed but it's good enough for this reader to want to read/listen further.

The next book in the series is Letters in the Library (2019)

Four stars

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