MUDDLED THROUGH

Murder strikes too close to home for a boomerang daughter in Maine.

It’s bad enough when someone trashes Lupine Design, the pottery shop where her sister, Livvie Ramsey, works. When Julia Snowden learns there’s been a murder in the shop’s basement, though, that’s a step too far. Because she never did manage to find a winter job after coming home to help out with the Snowden Family Clambake, her family’s summer-only enterprise, she’s got plenty of free time. And ever since Gus, her landlord, reclaimed the cottage he’d rented her to house his out-of-town relatives, she’s been living back home and sharing companionable dinners of “refrigerator soup” with her mom, so she’s got no household to run. Of course she’s going to investigate, especially since the police seem to regard Zoey Butterfield as their prime suspect. The owner of Lupine Designs had good reason to want cranky old Phinney Hardison out of the way. He opposed her on practically everything, from the Busman’s Harbor pedestrian mall to the music she plays in her studio, which is part of the Main Street shop they share. But Zoey is just too creative, smart, and kindhearted to have killed Phinney, especially in a location that pointed a finger marked “guilty” directly at her. Julia has only to take time off from charming every eligible bachelor in Busman’s Harbor, as well as a few from away, to save her new friend by finding the real killer.

Proof that even the underemployed can get the cozy sleuth itch.