Book Review: Yankee Doodle Dead by Carolyn Hart (Death on Demand #10)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Annie, Max, good mystery

Cons: Victim too cliché

The Bottom Line:

Fireworks and death

Victim a much hated man

Still good overall

Retired General Shot on the 4^th

It’s always fun when a mystery is centered around a holiday.  We get lots of Christmas mysteries each year, but Yankee Doodle Dead takes us to a different holiday – the 4^th of July.

This is the tenth book in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series.  The series features Annie Darling, the owner of a mystery bookstore on a South Carolina resort island.  And it’s a good thing she has all this knowledge of mysteries because she keeps finding herself in real life mysteries.  Her husband, Max, is always quick to jump in and help her figure out what happened.

This year, for the fourth, Broward’s Rock is putting on a festival.  It’s a fundraising event for the local library, but local merchants are setting up booths as well.  Not only will Annie have a booth for her bookstore, but she is also involved as part of the library board.

Unfortunately, a new comer to the island, retired Brigadier General Charlton “Bud” Hatch has joined the board, and he expects things to be done his way.  He’s making enemies, not just on the library board, but all over the island.  So, when someone shoots him in the middle of the fireworks, there are plenty of suspects.  The evidence points to a teen, but Annie and Max believe he is innocent.  Can they prove it?

I struggled a bit with the first half of the book.  That’s roughly how long it took for Bud to die.  Now, this isn’t a case where nothing was happening during that time.  We were seeing him interact with and irritate multiple people, so once he died, we had plenty of suspects already set up.  Still, it was so obvious he was going to be the victim, I was ready for it to happen already.

The other issue is that Bud was a cliché.  He was sexist, racist, and homophobic.  He had no good qualities at all.  Now, I like it when the victim is evil because it sets up so many possible suspects.  But this kind of character takes no real effort or thought to create, and it’s just lazy.

Once we get into the second half of the book, things really do pick up.  We’ve got a plethora of suspects, and they keep Annie and Max hopping as they try to figure out what really happened.  The ultimate solution was logical, although the book does end on a bit of a somber note for the series.

It worked, but it was a bit of a switch since the book is filled with the usual fun and funny characters.  I laughed at the usual antics from the series regulars, and the suspects were real enough to keep me engaged.  I still feel like the characters in the series overall could be stronger, but I enjoy them.

As always with this series, I listened to the audio.  Kate Reading is always a delight as she brings these characters and stories to life.  I’m sure if I read one, I would picture them sounding like she reads them.

Despite my earlier complaints, this wasn’t a bad book.  I did enjoy Yankee Doodle Dead.  I just hope that we start to see less predictable villains with other motives for murder as the series goes along.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Death on Demand series.