Clearing Emma’s Friend of Murder
When I read book four of Annette Dashofy’s Detective Honeywell Mysteries last year, I thought that the ending set up book five, Hell Hath No Fury. It’s always nice to be right. It’s also always nice to have a new book in this series since you know you are in for a good mystery.
The series focuses on Detective Matthias Honeywell and crime reporter Emma Anderson. The two met in book one, and, at this point in the series, they’ve started dating.
The first four books in the series have been set in Erie, Pennsylvania, but this book moves the action to Washington County, where Emma grew up. Both Emma and Matthias are on leave from their jobs to recover from their injuries from the previous book, so when Emma’s best friend, Eric, calls saying that Emma’s drug addict sister, Nell, has come home, Emma and Matthias take off to help. But it isn’t long before Emma’s sister gives them the slip again, and the developer who is trying to get his hands on Emma’s family property turns up murdered. With Eric the prime suspect and Matthias well outside his jurisdiction, can he help? Or will his efforts make things worse for everyone?
This book doesn’t contain any true spoilers for the previous book, but it does contain plenty of references to it. I mean, it starts within a day or two of that book ending, so it makes sense. So, if you are at all interested in this series, I highly recommend you at least start there. And, let’s be honest, Annette’s books are so good once you start, you’ll want to read them all, so you might as well go back to the beginning.
While this might be the Detective Honeywell series, Emma is as much a main character as Matthias is. As always, the two trade being the point of view character for the entire book, which is always used to wonderful effect to fully tell the story.
Since we were going to Emma’s childhood home, I thought she would get the majority of the character development, but that wasn’t the case. While she certainly got her time in the spotlight, Matthias also got his moments to shine. Eric and Nell have popped up in the past, and it was nice to really spend some time with them. While that maybe it for returning characters with any significant page time, the new characters we meet along the way help pull us into the story.
I did find one of the subplots weak, but that’s my only complaint with the book. As always, the main mystery is great. I was confused as to what was going on and why until I reached the suspenseful climax.
This is a police procedural, so keep that in mind when you pick up the book. As long as you go in with your expectations set appropriately, you’ll be fine.
Hell Hath No Fury is another page turning read from Annette Dashofy. Her fans will be delighted to pick it up. If you aren’t already reading her books, you’ll want to fix that today.
Here are the rest of the Detective Honeywell Mysteries.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
Thank you, Mark!
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