February 12, 2012

Town in a Lobster Stew by B.B. Haywood

This is the seconds book in the Candy Holliday cozy mystery series. I have to say I enjoyed the first one more. This one wasn't terrible, but it wasn't stellar either.

Candy is surprised when a local woman calls her asking for help. The woman's friend is missing and her secret recipe for lobster stew has been stolen as well. Not wanting to get mixed up in a bunch of things again, Candy reluctantly agrees to help, but quickly finds herself in the middle of things as she is chosen to help judge the Lobster Stew contest and discovers that the stolen recipe has been entered. When another local ends up murdered it just adds to the case and Candy has to find out what happened, even if it means putting herself in danger again.

Candy is ok as a character. She does a lot of things but I never really feel connected to her. I guess her emotions are never put on display along with her detective skills. Her dad is a little better, but he's not really in this book too much. Her best friend Maggie at least is a little more flamboyant and has more personality, but she can act extremely immature at times too. There are plenty of side characters, but we're never really given a plethora of information to become connected to them either.

These mysteries are hard to solve. In fact there are minimal clues and it always ends up a twist, which can take some of the fun out of it. I at least like to have a fighting chance at guessing who the murderer is. I don't want it to be too easy, but it shouldn't be near impossible like this one was. This book had a very slow moving pace as well. It just didn't hold my attention and it actually took me a week to finish this book, when it should have just been a cozy evening read. Thank goodness for the recipes at least. All about lobster they looked delicious, even though getting lobster around here will be near impossible.

An ok mystery. Not the best, but slightly entertaining to read. I'll probably look into the next one in the series.

Town in a Lobster Stew
Copyright 2011
365 pages

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