Carrie Doyle Spins Another Quirky, Fun Mystery: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGONFRUIT TATTOO

The third Plum Lockhart mystery in the Trouble in Paradise series is at least as much fun as its predecessors, It Takes Two to Mango and Something's Guava Give. At first glance, Plum's plunge into entrepreneurship with her own villa rental company on the tropical island of Paraiso looks rash and foolish -- and could anyone really be such a murder magnet as this scrappy yet star-struck amateur sleuth?

But Plum can grow on a person! A refugee from corporate marketing and the now outdated world of New York City magazines, Plum is determined to salvage her self-esteem by out-competing the very nasty Damian Rodriguez in representing the best villa rentals on the island. If that means making nice with the glitterati on a luxury yacht in the neighborhood, Plum has the guts to do it.

When one of the staffers from the yacht wants to consult her about a deadly threat, Plum has trouble clearing time for this distraction. So when the girl with the dragonfruit tattoo gets attacked, is it Plum's fault? She'll clear some emotional space by dressing down one of the sleazy men on board:

"I don't like your behavior, Joel," said Plum, who crossed her arms angrily for effect. "You are humiliating your wife. Everyone on the boat watches you flirt outrageously with an actress young enough to be your daughter. It's pathetic. I hate what you are doing to my friend, and you should remember you're a married man in a position of power and not exploit it."

The left vein on Joel's temple started to throb, and Plum thought it might explode.

Doyle's plotting, as usual, is tight, and the action sparkling; if Plum's combination of courage and naivety stilts some of her trilled or whispered conversation and moves the plot twists to the quirky side, it's a fair trade for the fun of discovering how she'll handle the next intensely awkward situation. Not to mention whether she'll ever have a functioning romance with Juan Kevin, the security guard who's been trying to date her!

Don't take anything seriously in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGONFRUIT TATTOO. All the fun and frivolity may not give you the feel of a tropical vacation ... but a few hours away from real life might be almost as good as one of the many fruity cocktails that Plum keeps swigging.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: New Cozies from Carrie Doyle and Linda Reilly

If your TBR (to be read) stack is getting a little short, or too "heavy" with crime, you can lighten it up with new January releases from seasoned authors Carrie Doyle and Linda Reilly.

Doyle's "Trouble in Paradise" series began with It Takes Two to Mango, featuring expert but disappointed real estate pro Plum Lockhart. Now, in SOMETHING'S GUAVA GIVE, Plum's got her own villa broker agency rolling on an island in the Caribbean. But her New York City corporate lift hasn't let go of her, because her not-quite-budy Gerald Hand up there demands a return favor that drags her into investigating a murder. Whenever Plum does this, she has to negotiate how closely she'll work with a hunky director of security that she can't stop admiring and drooling over. It's a great setup for both romance and comedy, and Doyle demonstrates once again her expert handling of this lively balance.

UP TO NO GOUDA is the start of a new cozy series by Linda Reilly, already known for her cat-focused mysteries. Carly Hale isn't letting widowhood stop her from trying her dream business: a Vermont grilled cheese restaurant (this is "A Grilled Cheese Mystery").  But just a few months into the restaurant's success, the town bully tries to evict her. Guess who ends up murdered on the restaurant doorstep? Carly's efforts to save both her business and her reputation become tangled with new directions of affection, but thank goodness, she's got terrific friends to help her through. Recipes at the back, of course!

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: A "Trouble in Paradise" Mystery from Carrie Doyle, IT TAKE TWO TO MANGO

After reading Carrie Doyle's traditionally cozy country inn mysteries set in the Hamptons, IT TAKES TWO TO MANGO comes as a huge surprise -- because Plum Lockhart, thrust unexpectedly into a real estate job on a tropical island, is such an incredibly unlikeable character!

Reasons for her attitudes and behavior are quickly provided (her isolated childhood, rejection by her parents, etc.), but honestly, even Plum sometimes realizes she's never going to enjoy life or friendships, even in Paraiso. And what she's known as a scrappy New York magazine journalist isn't working for her.

Plum  quickly learned that having a fit or creating scene was not a successful approach to getting things done in Paraiso. An event like a crushed golf cart drew an enormous amount of resort personnel to stand and evaluate the scene and discuss endlessly what should be done before no one did anything. Things happened when they happened. And when Plum tried to hasten their reactions, she was met with the requisite "tranquilo."

A murder of one of her villa clients threatens Plum's employment, the security staffer she'd like to attract seems to see her emotional issues way too clearly, and her stylish New York City clothes are not suited to the humid warmth of the locale. Doyle's handling of the sea change that Plum needs in her life and her soul feels in a strange way like a grown-up recap of how an angry kid gets isolated in a school move. Some island type-casting also stings.

Yet Plum is so very injured in her temperamental behaviors that the book chapters are almost irresistible—so the suspense is not so much who killed the visitor, as ... how on earth will Plum adapt, and can she possibly do it before she has to turn tail and return to the city?

For light distraction and a chance to argue with the author in your thoughts, pick up this Poisoned Pen Press offering (first in a series) and tuck it into the beach bag. (Release date June 29.)

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mentions: Mysteries from Kelly Irvin, Carrie Doyle, Cate Quinn

Trust Kelly Irvin for intense plotting that highlights the suspense in "romantic suspense." Her February release, HER EVERY MOVE (Thomas Nelson), pushes together a librarian and a detective when a bomb explodes during a climate change debate. Among deft red herrings and page-turning pressure, and with compelling attraction between them, Jackie Santoro and Detective Avery Wick turn the library's next event into an effective trap for a killer -- and a test run for their irrepressible need for each other's deep and intelligent attention. "Wick had an intensity that reminded her of sticking a bobby pin in a socket." Looking for a lively beach read? Grab this one.

There's something about a cozy mystery set at a rural inn that's hard to resist, especially when the innkeeper, Antonia Bingham, is an outstanding chef with abundant comments about the best gourmet delights. With DEATH ON BULL PATH (Poisoned Pen Press), the prolific Carrie Doyle expands her "Hamptons Murder Mystery" series. Antonia's forced collaboration with an obnoxious local journalist keeps her relatively safe and helps track down the killer in a pair of summerhouse murders ... but only a very last-minute discovery salvages her own romance with her movie-star crush, Nick Darrow. "You have a proclivity for danger," says her best friend.

If you look up author Cate Quinn online, you can get quickly confused, since her hefty thriller BLACK WIDOWS (Sourcebooks) gets labeled a debut, or a US debut, or her first thriller -- but actually she's an established historical fiction author in Europe. Thus, her plunge into Mormon polygamy for this thriller is an outsider's view of Utah and the American-origin religion with its powerful traditions. Telling a murder story from the points of view of three wives is a novel approach, but doesn't allow readers to follow the time-honored crime fiction task of assembling clues and working out the killer. So the book's a lively read (and hefty!), but won't satisfy genre fans.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Murder in the Hamptons: Carrie Doyle's Series Goes Mass Market This Summer

Good news: Carrie Doyle's mystery series set in the Hamptons (at the far end of New York's Long Island) has hit the reprint jackpot and is being reissued this summer by Poisoned Pen Press, now a mystery imprint of Sourcebooks. Bad news: Someone put a really silly cover onto the reprint of DEATH ON WINDMILL WAY (the first of the series). Good news: We all know how to ignore a cover -- and in this case, there's a good mystery inside the book. Bad news: The title sounds like this is set in either a Dutch holiday resort, or a suburb that's named the roads in its developments using too large a committee. Good news: This is actually an innkeeper mystery with a lot of pizzazz.

DEATH ON WINDMILL WAY opens with a sneaky prologue that ensures reader awareness of a malicious murderer causing a death at the inn. Then it leaps to the point of view, maintained for the rest of the books, of innkeeper Antonia Bingham. New to inn ownership and to the conundrum of Hamptons life -- the feel of a village among the year-rounders, but also acute dependence on the multimillionaires owning property in the beach-based Nirvana, and on heedless tourists -- Antonia has a lot to master: meal and snack prep that lives up to the high-end expectations of the resort area (she's a "foodie" so that's natural to her), flawless management of staff and premises (she has high expectations of herself), and of course a personal life that's sure to flip back and forth from romantic hope to business despair.

So the last thing she needs is to learn a rumor that owners of her newly purchased premises, the Windmill Inn, are fated to die under suspicious circumstances. Sharpening the discomfort is the news that her predecessor may indeed (as readers of course already know) have been murdered. "Before she had heard the suspicious deaths rumor, she had been fine. In fact, she had been sleeping in this inn for six months and never felt frightened. She wasn't a scaredy-cat ... She was the boss! ... She would not succumb to hysteria."

Doyle's writing is generally plot related, with plenty of Antonia's inner view of events and stresses. But this description she provides of the village around the inn sets the outdoor scene nicely:

East Hampton, renowned for its award-winning beaches, picturesque villages, and the ethereal light that had inspired some of the greatest American painters, is nestled on the top of Long Island's south shore, bordered by the Atlantic on one side and various bays on the other. Everything about the town is profoundly quaint: from the acres of farmland bursting with abundant crops to the shaded streets lined with windmills, shingled houses, and churches.

Then there are the characters from whom Antonia tries to pull details, including Naomi, who sold the inn to her:

"The official cause of death [for Gordon, the previous owner] was ... a heart attack," she said at last, glaring at Barbie, who still wouldn't meet her eye.

Antonia felt her heart race. "What was the unofficial cause of death?"

Naomi finally glanced in Antonia's direction. She gave a small smile, her lips curling enough so that her thin top lip disappeared into the bottom. The look reminded Antonia of a defiant child forced to lie to a teacher.

"Heart attack," Naomi repeated before adding, "but I'd bet my bottom dollar that this tramp here figured out a way to cause it."...

Antonia kept her eyes on Naomi. "Why didn't you tell the police if you suspected it?" asked Antonia.

Naomi rolled her eyes. "I wanted to make sure I could sell the inn. No one would have bought this place if they thought Gordon was murdered."

Antonia's friend Genevieve, who'd invited her East to buy the place, thinks the amateur detective role suits this new innkeeper to the max: "You're kind of nosy," she points out. "I mean, didn't your parents nickname you Snoopy because you were always snooping around?"

But the motive for the killings — yes, they multiply — begins to also threaten Antonia as she gets closer to understanding what's taken place. There's an inheritance at stake, for instance, as well as bad blood among previous employees of her inn.

Gutsy in a determined fashion, and creative in staging a situation to unravel the crimes, Antonia is a nice addition to modern amateur sleuths. And in spite of her relief at the end of the book ("glad to be officially out of the crime-solving business"), Poisoned Pen Press has two more in the series ready for this summer (amazing! three books in one summer! a treat for this who get frustrated with the slow pace of a series), and Carrie Doyle's fourth in her Hamptons murder mysteries will publish in 2021.

Just remember: Ignore the cover. Ignore the title. Go for the fun of an easy-read mystery in a charming setting. That's what summer (in the Hamptons or anyplace else) is meant for.

Note for mystery collectors: You could set up a nifty shelf of Hamptons mysteries, now that Doyle is adding so many. For instance, there James Patterson's The Beach House, Twanged from Carol Higgins Clark, even an R. L. Stine trio called The Sitter.
  
PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.