Book Review: Welcome Home to Murder by Rosalie Spielman (Hometown Mysteries #1)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Strong characters with some twists on the familiar

Cons: A few pacing issues in the middle

The Bottom Line:

Retire from Army

Only to find dead body

Fun twists in debut

Retired From the Army Doesn’t Mean the End to Dead Bodies

When Rosalie Spielman’s Welcome Home to Murder crossed my radar, I was immediately interested.  The setting, a small town in Idaho, doesn’t get a lot of cozy mystery love.  Plus, the main character was a retired Army vet.  I’m always looking for something different in my cozy mysteries.  Sadly, it took me until this year to read the book, but I enjoyed it.

Tessa Treslow left her hometown in Idaho as soon as she graduated from high school.  She’s now spent over twenty years in the army and is ready to retire.  Since she still doesn’t know what she is going to do with the rest of her life, she agrees to return to New Oslo for an extended visit.  While reuniting with her parents and aunt, she senses that there is something they are keeping from her.  But she learns more in the more horrific way when she and her aunt find a dead body in the garage her aunt runs.  The police, in the form of Tessa’s high school boyfriend, feel that her family has the perfect motive.  Can Tessa figure out what really happened?

Yes, this book does fall into some of the cozy mystery tropes, but with twists.  Tessa is older than a typical cozy mystery sleuth, which I appreciated.  She also has a very different background, which again, was great.  But we also have the typical cozy town quirky residents, and I really enjoyed meeting them.

There is some depth to this book right out of the gate, with both the characters and the story.  You could feel the backstory, even if we didn’t get it all at once.  I truly appreciated how that was handled.  We were never needlessly teased.  We were given information when we needed it, and it was never in the form of a data dump.  With as much backstory as there was to learn, it could have felt that way, but it didn’t

Which brings us to the mystery.  I did feel the pacing was a little uneven in the middle, but overall, it was also solid, with plenty of red herrings to keep me entertained.  The climax did answer all my questions successfully.

I look forward to seeing what else Tessa can find now that she’s back in her hometown.  If you want to start a cozy series with a little different sleuth, be sure to pick up Welcome Home to Murder.