Review: A Solvable Cozy Southern Mystery
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 7, 2014
A member of Cat Thompson's Chubby Chicks Club, which is not just for chicks or chubbies, has been found dead. The police are quick to deem it a suicide, but Cat and her friends know that couldn't be the case and swing into action to find the real answers behind the crime.The mystery presented is fairly simple to solve given the few clues in the story. There were not a lot of options or red herrings or even plot twists that could make for a more complex mystery to be solved. The emphasis was on building the characters and their backgrounds, presumably to set the stage for their further adventures in sequels.The characters as a whole were well crafted and likable. The one exception was a character I liked, Annie Mae, but given her assigned background as a retired university professor with a PhD, she acted more like a flighty airhead than a well educated woman. No one with that education and background would have made the types of silly comments and assumptions that Annie Mae did throughout the book. It simply didn't ring true.Another bothersome problem with the story was the declaration of suicide that the police made. I found it hard to believe that any coroner worth his job wouldn't have detected immediately that the cause of death could not have been self-inflicted. Calling it a suicide only caused there to be no further police investigation, which drove the club members into doing their own detecting. If it had been deemed a murder from the start, then having the club members and the police both looking into the murder would not have meant the rest of the book would have had to change very much, so it is unclear why the author made this choice for the story.Overall it was an enjoyable, quick read. Having a more complex mystery would have improved the book, but I found the characters to be charming enough to want to visit with them again for their next adventure.Mildly recommended.