Book Review: Lethal in Old Lace by Duffy Brown

Picking up mere moments after the fifth installment of the Consignment Shop Mysteries, Duffy Brown has maintained the bar when it comes to cozy mysteries. And it's a hard bar to achieve.

Walker Boone has been cleared of the murder of his father, Conway Adkins and has asked Reagan Summerside to marry him. Enthusiastically she agrees and the two have decided to go out for the evening to celebrate after they go to the funeral of Willie Fishbine. The only reason people are turning up at the funeral is to make sure that Willie is indeed dead.

And while they're out, Reagan finds a body in the back seat of her neighbors car (parked in an alley) and when she takes a closer look, she doesn't know the victim and then sets out to find Boone.

When they get back to the scene of the crime, the car is gone and Boone tells her that she may have thought she saw a dead body, based on the pressure that she's been under the last couple of weeks. Reagan thinks he's right, but later when she returns home, the body shows up in the window of her consignment shop and then disappears again.

Still without a clue as to who the dead woman is Reagan starts to plan for the wedding, along with her mother and Aunt KiKi. All seems fine and dandy until Regan's dog BW (Bruce Willis) starts digging in the spinster sister's yard next door and discover that Elsie and Annie Fritz have buried the body in their vegetable garden.

The sister's are arrested while Regan and KiKi are blackmailed by Willie's young grandson. He tells the pair that he knows his grandfather didn't die of an asthma attack, but that he was murdered.

With the threat of being exposed on YouTube, Regan starts to investigate what could have happened and KiKi, after spraining her ankle during a dance class,is admitted into the Sleepy Pines Retirement Home for some rehabilitation.

KiKi's stay is more than restful as they discover that the murderer is right there under their noses and have to stop before he or she kills one of them.

Trying to condense the goings on in this installment is hard, since Brown has a lot going on. There's the love triangle, the wedding(s), kidnapping and a slew of little things that will definitely keep you interested in this installment.

Although at this time, the next installment hasn't been announced as to when it will be released. My guess it will be sometime in 2020 so it's something that I'm keeping my eyes open for.

However, in the review of Demise in Denim, I discovered that there is a part four which basically sets the pace for the last two installments. Since I don't own a Kindle, I had no idea about the part four so I won't be going back to review it. I think you can skip part four and just continue on with the actual physical books.