Who Killed the Developer at Emmy’s Family Resort?
I’ve been hearing lots of good things about Annie McEwen’s Northwoods mystery series, so I was looking forward to diving in with Resort to Murder, the series debut. While I can certainly see the appeal, there was one quirk that bothered me.
The book introduces us to Emmy Cooper. Her family has owned a resort on a lake in Wisconsin for decades. With her life hitting a snag in Chicago, she’s come home for a visit.
It’s only once she’s arrived that she learns Thad Houston, a mega developer, is trying to buy up her family’s land and surrounding land to open a mage resort. No one in the area is interested in selling, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping him from persisting. After her dad has a very public fight with Thad, she finds the developer’s dead body beyond the last cabin on their property. Can Emmy clear her father of the crime?
I love cozies set in resort communities, and this one really appeals. Emmy has a ready-made group of family and friends, and I bought all their relationships. These are a group of people I would love to spend more time with.
And the setting? Sign me up for a week Emmy’s place. Between murders, of course.
The mystery was well plotted, too. It starts strongly with some good suspects to keep us guessing before we reach a climax that makes perfect sense.
So what was my issue? The writing at times summarized the conversations. I’m okay with it when it’s something like “we said our goodbyes.” Which we got at times. But we’d also get summaries of investigation conversations. When the book actually allowed us to see the conversation happening, I was fully invested. But otherwise, I’d feel like I was outside looking in at the action.
I’m hoping this is a quirk that goes away as the series progresses because I enjoyed Resort to Murder overall. I do have the second, and I’ll give it a try at some point.
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