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Book 89, 2016
Nov. 11th, 2016 10:52 amThursday evening, I was able to finish reading Murder Buys a T-shirt, which is the first installment in the "Haunted Souvenir Shop" mystery series by Christy Fifield.
Glory Martine inherited Southern Treasures, an antique/souvenir shop, from her uncle several years ago. The shop came with Bluebeard, her uncle's parrot. Glory enjoys her life: working in the shop, going on buying expeditions for it, living above the shop, hanging out with her core group of friends, and admiring the handsome book shop owner across the street.
When Glory and her friend Karen are out and about, they come upon the scene of an accident. The local football hero has rolled his muscle car and died. Glory returns to find her shop trashed, and Bluebeard says in a surprisingly clear voice, "It wasn't an accident." Glory had always had the sense that Uncle Louis was haunting the shop, and now she's convinced. She confesses to her friends, and now all of them are keen to look into the accident, putting Glory right in the middle of the action.
The town of Keyhole Bay is small and homey, and peopled with wonderful characters. Glory was likable, and I really enjoyed her friends, as well as Jake, the proprietor of Beach Books. I was able to discern who dunnit fairly early, but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the story. Editing was clean, but for one egregious error, in which the dead teen's name was swapped out for a different male character, making for a somewhat morbid paragraph! Another thing that bothered me was, there wasn't any resolution to a subsequent break-in at Glory's shop. Initially, the reader could surmise it had something to do with the murder, but not much else was mentioned about it at all. So, unless it ties in to a later book in the series, I'm at a loss...
Favorite line: Really? I was being dissed by a bird?
Four stars:
****
Glory Martine inherited Southern Treasures, an antique/souvenir shop, from her uncle several years ago. The shop came with Bluebeard, her uncle's parrot. Glory enjoys her life: working in the shop, going on buying expeditions for it, living above the shop, hanging out with her core group of friends, and admiring the handsome book shop owner across the street.
When Glory and her friend Karen are out and about, they come upon the scene of an accident. The local football hero has rolled his muscle car and died. Glory returns to find her shop trashed, and Bluebeard says in a surprisingly clear voice, "It wasn't an accident." Glory had always had the sense that Uncle Louis was haunting the shop, and now she's convinced. She confesses to her friends, and now all of them are keen to look into the accident, putting Glory right in the middle of the action.
The town of Keyhole Bay is small and homey, and peopled with wonderful characters. Glory was likable, and I really enjoyed her friends, as well as Jake, the proprietor of Beach Books. I was able to discern who dunnit fairly early, but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the story. Editing was clean, but for one egregious error, in which the dead teen's name was swapped out for a different male character, making for a somewhat morbid paragraph! Another thing that bothered me was, there wasn't any resolution to a subsequent break-in at Glory's shop. Initially, the reader could surmise it had something to do with the murder, but not much else was mentioned about it at all. So, unless it ties in to a later book in the series, I'm at a loss...
Favorite line: Really? I was being dissed by a bird?
Four stars:
****
