An Old-Fashioned Murder
A Moonshine Mystery
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Secrets, lies, and a splash of moonshine: a classic country house whodunit with a distinctly Southern twist.
After losing her husband and her home, small-town girl Daisy McGovern moves in with her invalid mother at an old inn in sleepy southwestern Virginia. When the inn's eccentric proprietor, Aunt Emily, decides to throw a weekend party for a small group of friends and neighbors, everybody is excited--until a winter storm approaches and one of the guests is crushed by an antique bookcase during the night.
At first, the death appears to be an accident. But as the storm worsens and the sheriff is unable to reach them, suspicion slowly grows. Was it murder? After the inn loses power and a second death occurs, it's clear to Daisy that one among them is a killer. But who? The young, new, secretive maid? The antique-peddling pair of spinster sisters? Her not-so-welcome in-laws? The peculiar house-hunting couple? The supposedly stranded motorist?
With no way to leave and no way to get help, Daisy's only contacts to the outside world are her best friend Beulah and the always charming (and equally troublesome) moonshiner, Rick Balsam. Trapped with a clever and seemingly undetectable murderer, she must unravel the truth before the party ends with her funeral.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Miller's lighthearted third Moonshine mystery set in southwestern Virginia (after 2014's A Nip of Murder), a freak blizzard strands an ill-assorted group of people at the Tosh Inn, whose elderly proprietor, Emily Tosh, is viewed with affection by baker Daisy McGovern, who works for the "tough old biddy." Things take a turn for the worse when an antique secretary, a recent gift from Emily's spry, 94-year-old friend, Henry Brent, falls over and fatally crushes one of the guests. A second death suggests that the first was no accident. It's an intriguing setup, but the underdeveloped characters do little more than bicker among themselves, slowing the pace. Even Daisy seems to go through the motions of caring for her ailing mother and helping Emily with the chores. Since all the action takes place within the inn's confines, the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains setting, which featured prominently in earlier installments, gets short shrift in this outing.
