Rummaging for Blackmail Secrets
I’m really finding myself looking forward to my visits to Broward’s Rock. The antics of the characters are fun, and that was the case again with White Elephant Dead.
This is book eleven in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series. Our main character is Annie Darling, who runs a mystery bookstore on the resort island off the coast of South Carolina. Even though it is a vacation destination, it seems to have more than its share of murder and mayhem.
This book finds the community getting ready for the Women’s Club’s annual white elephant sale. When Kathryn Girard disappears with the club van while out collecting donations, Annie’s friend and best customer, Henny Brawley, heads out after her. But then no one hears from Henny. Annie and her husband, Max, start searching for her. They find the van with Kathryn’s body in the back and Henny’s car nearby. The new police chief thinks that means Henny much have killed Kathryn. But Annie knows better. The real question is, why would anyone want to kill Kathryn? And what happened to Henny?
The plot hooked me right away. I suspected I knew how the first act would turn out, but I still wanted to keep reading to find out for sure. It isn’t too long before we realize that Kathryn was blackmailing some people on the island – people who appear to be upstanding citizens with no secrets. Annie and Max then have to figure out what they might have been hiding that Kathryn knew about. It’s not an original plot for a mystery, but I found myself enjoying it here. How it is presented gives the story an extra layer, or so it felt when I was reading it.
However, because we don’t start uncovering these secrets until well into the second half, I found it hard to keep the suspects straight in my mind. This is often an issue in the series since the supporting characters seem to be a bit thin. Additionally, there was an aspect of the mystery that got dropped. I would have loved to see some kind of resolution to that even if it didn’t turn out to have something to do with why Kathryn died. Still, the climax made sense.
The series regulars were in top form, however. They can be a bit over the top at times, but in the best way possible. I got plenty of laughs from them as I was reading the book.
Credit for that partially goes to Kate Reading, who once again narrated the audio book I was listening to. Her performance is wonderful at capturing the characters and their antics without getting in the way of the story. Some of the laughs I had were definitely because of her.
This series is famous for its numerous references to other mysteries, both classics and contemporary. Since this one came out in 1999, I am beginning to recognize more and more of the contemporary references, which is fun. However, I do wish they’d been toned down a little. While we didn’t get the lists of names that annoyed me in earlier books, I did find the comparisons to other mystery characters and plot lines get out of hand at times.
Most of my issues with White Elephant Dead are things that are true across the series so far. So, they are minor for me at this point. If you are already a fan of these characters and haven’t read this book yet, you are in for a treat. And if you’ve missed this series, you’ll want to make time for it soon.
Be sure to read the rest of the Death on Demand Mysteries.
I really need to read more Carolyn Hart. This looks like a fun one despite the minor issues.
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