July 13, 2015
In bestseller Meier’s busy 22nd Lucy Stone mystery (after 2014’s French Pastry Murder), the Tinker’s Cove, Maine, newspaper reporter is covering the town’s first ever Giant Pumpkin Fest when someone starts bumping off the competition for the Giant Pumpkin Weigh-In. The pumpkin-themed scenes along the town common are also vandalized, but the dead body at the Pumpkin Catapult contest clearly means some sicko wants to stop the festival. And with Lucy’s husband, Bill, as the number-one suspect, there’s no way she’ll leave the detecting to the professionals. Meanwhile, Country Cousins, a megabusiness headquartered in Tinker’s Cove, has its own problems with the return of Buck Miller, the prodigal son of CEO Tom Miller, who doesn’t like Buck’s newfangled ideas and is vehemently opposed to the use of Jonah’s Pond for an underwater pumpkin carving contest. Too many rabbit trails keep this whodunit from living up to Meier’s best, but series fans should be satisfied. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.
July 1, 2015
The Tinker's Cove Giant Pumpkin Fest turns into a giant pain in the squash for The Pennysaver's intrepid reporter Lucy Stone (Christmas Carol Murder, 2013, etc.). It isn't as if Lucy doesn't have enough on her plate. Her son, Toby, and daughter-in-law, Molly, are off studying fish farming in Haiti, leaving her in charge of 4-year-old Patrick. Between Molly's strict ban on sugar and television and the draconian safety rules head teacher Heidi Bloom has instituted at Little Prodigies preschool, Lucy's hard-pressed to keep up with her active grandson, who wants to be a ninja for Halloween, when, naturally, all the ninja costumes are sold out. Her husband, Bill, lavishes his affections on Priscilla, the perhaps 500-pound beauty he hopes to enter in the festival's Giant Pumpkin contest. Bill's even been paying scruffy Evan Wickes, local jack-of-all-trades, to help him build a catapult designed to win the pumpkin-hurling contest. Still, Lucy tries her best to be upbeat as she covers a wide range of festival events, musing as she does on the creeping commercialism that's taken over Christmas and now threatens Halloween. She even seeks out an interview with Sam "Buck" Miller, youngest in the line of proprietors of Country Cousins, a Tinker's Cove institution that provides local residents with everything from polo shirts to tire irons. She also collaborates with former librarian Julia Ward Howe Tilley, now well into her 90s, on plans for Tinker's Cove's Take Back the Night Rally as her daughter, Sara, now a sophomore at Winchester College, frets about the erosion of women's access to reproductive health care. All this musing and fretting pushes the murder, when it finally arrives, into the back pages of Meier's 25th, and the solution is barely a footnote.
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September 1, 2015
Time to prepare for the annual Halloween festivities; Bill Stone and his buddy Evan Wickes have built a pumpkin catapult. But when Evan's body is found and Bill becomes the No. 1 suspect, reporter Lucy has to put on her investigating hat. Meier's 24th series entry (after French Pastry Murder) is cozy as cozy can get.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2015
As the town of Tinker's Cove, Maine, prepares for its first Giant Pumpkin Fest, reporter Lucy Stone is busy covering updates for her paper and also dealing with husband Bill, who is spending too much time and money building a pumpkin catapult. The couple is also caring for a young grandchild while Bill's parents are overseas on a mission trip. Bill's annoying, freeloading friend Evan, who has practically moved in to help build the catapult, turns up missing on the morning of the contest. After the event, Lucy finds his body in the car that was a target for the catapulters. As the festival continues even in the wake of murder, matters become more complicated with the curious arrival in town of Trey Miller, the son of a local businessman who was also murdered some time ago. Is there an unsavory connection between Trey and Evan? Lucy intends to find out. In this long-running series, Meier continues to exploit the charm factor in her small-town setting, while keeping the murder plots as realistic as possible in such a cozy world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)