Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Maggie, the rest of the cast, fast moving story
Cons: One niggle, but overall it’s minor
The Bottom Line:
Music festival
Brings murder to Pelican
Fast paced and fun book
Murder Isn’t Music to Maggie’s Ears
Louisiana has festivals for just about everything – at least
more than we do here in California. And,
while the best known are in New Orleans, the small town of Pelican is getting
into the act in Ellen Byron’s Cajun Country Mysteries. Fatal Cajun Festival find Pelican
offering their answer to Jazz Fest, with murderous results.
Cajun Country Live! has arrived. The brainchild of Maggie Crozat’s grand-mere,
it is taking place the week before Jazz Fest and has managed to land a huge
name. Tammy Barker is a local girl made
good since she won a national television singing competition, and she has
agreed to return and make a couple of appearances at the event. However, this proves to be a problem for
Maggie’s friend Gaynell. Gaynell and her
band were hoping to use their show at the event as an audition for Jazz Fest,
but Tammy has a grudge against Gaynell from their high school days and manages
to sabotage things.
Tammy has a set on the opening night of the festival. It goes fine, but tragedy strikes after her
show is over when someone is murdered.
Unfortunately, Gaynell finds herself the most logical suspect, something
that Maggie knows is crazy. But can she
prove her friend is innocent?
The book does a great job of introducing us to everyone
before the murder takes place. There is
a list of characters at the beginning of the book, but I never had to refer to
it since everyone stands out. There is a
long list of series regulars, but since this is book five, we’ve gotten to know
them pretty well at this point. It was
fun to check in with them and see how they are all doing. While we do meet the suspects rather quickly,
it isn’t too long before we can keep them all straight since they have very
different personalities.
Once the murder takes place, we are off and running. I did feel that the police were a little too
willing to work with Maggie, but that was my only complaint with the book. We get some good twists and turns along the
way to the climax with some fun sub-plots popping in and out to keep us
entertained. One involving Maggie’s
grand-mere is particularly good. This is
a fast-moving book that kept me hooked.
Maggie spends some time in the book making various Pralines
to sell in a booth at the festival. It
was no surprise to me that we got a couple different variations of Praline
recipes at the end of the book. (What
did surprise me is that not all of them have nuts in them; something important
to me since I am allergic to nuts.)
There are a total of five recipes, with Pralines only being two of them,
so there is something for everyone.
As always, one of the draws for me to this series is the
chance to travel to Cajun Country. I
haven’t spent that much time in Louisiana in real life, but after reading one
of these books, I always feel like I have visited. Of course, the desire to travel there in
person is also very strong when I am reading one of these books. Be sure to read the Lagniappe at the end of
the book, which gives a little more background on some of what we read about in
the book.
Author Ellen Byron has developed a loyal following that will
be delighted with Fatal Cajun Festival.
If you have missed these books so far, be sure to fix that today.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
Thank you so much!! You write such terrific, thoughtful reviews.
ReplyDeleteI love this series!
ReplyDeleteAlways enjoy.
ReplyDelete