BETTER HOMES AND CORPSES by Kathleen Bridge

Publisher:     Berkley

Published:     August 4, 2015

ISBN:       978-0425276587

Genre:      Cozy Mystery

Format:    Print

Obtained via:  Publisher  

Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina  Ginalrmreviews@gmail.com

FOUR-1/2 HEARTS

 

Worse than finding your fiancé with another women is finding out he’s back with his ex-wife.  When this happened to Meg Barrett she packed up and headed to the Hamptons.  No, she doesn’t have one of those swank estates.  Rather she’s renting a quaint little cottage from where she runs her fledgling interior design business.  Off on what will be her first job she heads to the residence of the Queen of the Hamptons – Caroline Spenser. What she finds when she arrives is her college roommate, Jillian, holding her mother, Caroline, apparently in a state of shock.   It appears someone stabbed Caroline and fatally so.  Jillian, always fragile, is even more so and is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia.  Jillian cannot remember how she came to be holding her dead mother or anything leading up to the murder.  With the family, including estranged son, Cole, gathered to pay their last respects mysterious things begin to happen around each member and Meg.  Pieces of furniture go missing, a truck tries to run Meg off the road and Jillian is once again attacked.  Can Meg find the killer before he can strike again?

When I first started Kathleen Bridge’s BETTER HOMES AND CORPSES I thought the author was working off a checklist of popular or inclusive issues such as having a token disabled person, a token gay couple, a token this and a token that.  I was more than pleasantly surprised when that wasn’t the case at all.  Meg does in fact have a disability, she is hard of hearing—legally deaf—but the way Bridge incorporates the disability into the story is really wonderfully done.  Bridge didn’t treat Meg’s deafness as a disability, but as something that made her stronger and more creative.  The way she used lip reading in solving the murder was a great twist.

You don’t find too many cozies taking place out on Long Island and the venue for Bridge’s series—the Hamptons and Montauk—makes for some interesting situations.  I had a sense of who the killer was before that character was finally revealed, but Bridge has some great twists and turns before that person is unveiled.  Mrs. Arnold, the housekeeper is rudeness personified—but she also provides some fun comic relief with her antics.

This is definitely one to add to your TBR.  I’m looking forward to book 2 in this fun, new series.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.