A MURDER LIKE NO AUTHOR

A bookstore owner tries her best to rein in the sleuthing of her murder mystery club.

Arlo Stanley’s nomadic parents let her attend high school in Sugar Springs, Mississippi, while they pursued their wandering ways. Now she’s settled down in the quaint town, where she owns a bookshop with her best friend, Chloe Carter, whom she saved from a murder rap when Mads Keller, Arlo’s high school love and now the police chief, arrested her for the murder of bestselling author Wally Harrison. Aiding in her detective adventures are Helen, Fern, and Camille, three older ladies whose Friday night book club has morphed into a successful mystery-solving endeavor despite Mads’ vocal disapproval. The bestselling book by the murdered Harrison, who was the father of Chloe’s son, has been made into a movie, and the town is frantically getting the old theater ready for a Hollywood-style opening night when Helen finds a guest at her B&B dead in the theater. The stranger, newly arrived in town, claimed he could prove that Harrison didn’t write the book and that it was his now-jailed assistant, Inna Kolisnychenko, who was the author. Because Chloe stands to make a lot of money for her son if the movie succeeds, she’s once more a person of interest, an unwelcome status that encourages Arlo and her cohorts to investigate. The high financial stakes mean there are plenty of suspects. Can Arlo pick out the killer from among them before becoming the next victim?

The book club ladies make a winning team in an amusing tale replete with down-home atmosphere and romance.