Review: Mistletoe Murder

Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier

My rating: 4 Stars

While on a break at work one night, Lucy Stone finds her boss Sam Miller's body, As a busy mom with a tiring night job, the the last thing Lucy needs to do is to be playing amateur sleuth. Why is she playing sleuth? Because his apparent suicide was declared a murder, much as she already figured out. Much to the consternation of her husband, Lucy has never been one to let things go. She just can't help herself. So, she begins to uncover clues.

Mistletoe Murder is the first book in the Lucy Stone Mystery series. This was a fast-paced story and had a good sense of intrigue. I already adore Lucy. She is a great wife and a good mom and makes a fantastic little detective. It was fun watching her work things out and follow leads. I can see myself devouring this entire series in short order. If you enjoy cozy mysteries as much as I do, then you will really love this book. This delightful little story was a terrific one-sitting read. I eagerly look forward to the next in this series, Tippy-Toe Murders.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I started writing in the late ‘80s when I was attending graduate classes at Bridgewater State College. I wanted to become certified to teach high school English and one of the required courses was Writing and the Teaching of Writing. My professor suggested that one of the papers I wrote for that course was good enough to be published and I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories. I got $100 for the story and I’ve been writing ever since. The teaching, however, didn’t work out.

My books draw heavily on my experience as a mother of three and my work as a reporter for various weekly newspapers on Cape Cod. My heroine, Lucy Stone, is a reporter in the fictional town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, where she lives in an old farmhouse (quite similar to mine on Cape Cod!) with her restoration carpenter husband Bill and four children. As the series has progressed the kids have grown older, roughly paralleling my own family. We seem to have reached a point beyond which Lucy cannot age–my editor seems to want her to remain forty-something forever, though I have to admit I personally am dying to write “Menopause is Murder!”

I usually write one Lucy Stone mystery every year and as you can tell, my editor likes me to feature the holidays in my books. Of course Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and my newest mystery “Eggnog Murder,” is included in an anthology with two other Christmas novellas by Barbara Ross and Lee Hollis. I’ve long been a fan of the classic English country house mystery, and was a faithful watcher of “Downton Abbey,” so I couldn’t resist trying to write one. I think I succeeded rather well, if I do say so myself, with “British Manor Murder,” which came out in October, 2016.

My books are classified as “cozies” but a good friend insists they are really “comedies of manners” and I do enjoy expressing my view of contemporary American life.

Now that the kids are grown — we have five fabulous grandchildren — my husband and I are enjoying dividing our time between Braintree and Cape Cod, along with our cat, Sylvester.

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