Retro Reading: Murder Most Howl by Krista Davis
While at the half way point in the series, I still find myself on the fence. But narrowly.
This installment brings me something that I love- a blizzard that doesn’t seem to end.
With Holly Miller’s Oma in a two week Orient cruise (along with her best friend Rose) she has the task of hosting participants of the Murder Most Howl mystery weekend at the Sugar Maple Inn.
Holly thinks it’ll be a fun filled weekend, but all of that changes when she finds the body of local businessman, Norm Wilson on a bench on the porch during the first phase of the blizzard.
The mystery participants believe that this is a part of the weekend and set about trying to figure out who the murderer is based on written clues.
When Holly’s Aunt Birdie and a couple of other Wagtail residents get wind of the clues, Holly confronts pub owner, Val Kowalchuk, and demands to know why she put such vile clues in the packages. Val tells her that she didn’t do anything low and they conclude that Norm must have planted some of the bogus clues.
Holly’s also in a pickle when the inn’s handyman suddenly quits to take his dream job and as luck would have it, she meets Shadow Hobbs and hires him.
What she doesn’t know is Shadow has a shady past since he was accused of murder and items have disappeared from some unsuspecting guests.
As another storm bears down on the town, Holly and company try to figure out who attacked one of inn’s guest, who was left for dead at the bottom of an icy stairwell.
Davis has created a nice pet friendly town and likable characters, but I think the story itself is kind of boring and I thought there were once again too many characters (especially when you add in the cats and dogs).
It’s a good series thus far with some good storylines and I can only hope that it gets better from this point on.
