Short Story Review: “Halloween Hoedowns Can be Deadly” by Ryan Rivers (A Bucket List Mysteries Short)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Characters, plot, and fun

Cons: None as long as you pick it up expecting a short story

The Bottom Line:

Death at a hoedown

Plenty of fun in story

For a good, quick read

That Corpse Isn’t a Decoration

When Ryan Rivers crossed my radar a couple of weeks ago, I decided I had to meet his characters via the short story “Halloween Hoedowns Can be Deadly.”  It was perfect for this time of year, right?

This story includes characters from his Bucket List Mysteries.  It’s obvious from reading the book that this isn’t the first time the characters have met, but I had no problem jumping in here.  The action takes place in the town of Bluebonnet Hills, Texas, and introduces us to former tween actor Levi Blue and disgraced nurse Sho Tanaka.  The two have become friends, and it seems that trouble is constantly following them.

Levi and Sho are helping with a Halloween hoedown that is taking place in town.  However, things take an unexpected turn when they find the dead body of the town’s librarian in a trunk.  Since it’s doubtful she crawled in by herself, can the dynamic duo figure out what happened to her?

This story was just long enough to give me a taste for the tone of the series and the characters, and I absolutely loved both.  Obviously, we don’t get to know any of the characters with any depth, but Levi and Sho are fantastic main characters.  We actually get the story from Sho’s first person narration, and his observations are great.  We do meet Sho’s sister as well, and I like her.

Meanwhile, this story presents us with a good mystery with a couple of twists I didn’t see coming.  We also got good clues and a solution that made sense.

The tone I mentioned?  This book was so funny.  It has one of the best interrogation scenes I’ve read in a while; I just had to laugh as I was reading it.  There were other jokes and laughs as well.

All this in a story that took me just under an hour to read.  Yes, this really is a short story, but as long as you know that when you sit down to read it, you’ll be as hooked as I was.

This story made me anxious to move on to the prequel novella, which I’ve also already downloaded.  If you want a quick, fun Halloween set story to read this weekend, you won’t go wrong with “Halloween Hoedowns Can be Deadly.”

Be sure to cross the rest of the Bucket List Mysteries off your list.