Sunday, February 26, 2012

Death Comes Silently-Carolyn Hart

Death Comes Silently


Carolyn Hart

Berkley, Apr 3 2012, $24.95

ISBN: 9780425245705



In Broward’s Rock, South Carolina, Death on Demand bookstore owner has a scheduling conflict between an author signing and her volunteer work at Better Tomorrow charity shop. With business slow due to the wintry weather, she needs to be at her store so she enlists Gretchen Burkholt to take her place at Better Tomorrow.



Anxious Gretchen calls Annie several times claiming the charity’s handyman Jeremiah Young is dangerous and that she found an enigmatic note inside the coat of deceased Everett Hathaway. Although concerned over Gretchen’s anxiety, Annie assumes she is safe so she completes the signing before racing over to Better Tomorrow. However she feels guilty when she finds Gretchen dead from Jeremiah’s ax. Police Chief Billy Cameron believes Jeremiah killed the woman as he is an ex con; the murder weapon belonged to him; and he fled the crime scene. Annie and her best customer Henny Brawley thinks otherwise.



The latest Death on Demand cozy (see Laughed 'Til He Died and Dead by Midnight) is a superb entry that keeps the series fresh by introducing new players and new books into the engaging January South Carolina barrier island setting. The whodunit is deftly handled as the amateur sleuth mystery aficionados think Gretchen’s homicide ties back to Hathaway’s drowning; while Cameron has no doubt who the killer is. Carolyn Hart has written another strong whodunit.



Harriet Klausner



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