Retro Reading: Stuck on Murder by Lucy Lawrence
This Murder Should be stuck Elsewhere
For the sake of sanity let's just pretend that the small town of Morse Point, MA is a safe place to live.
In the first installment of The Decoupage Mysteries, Brenna Miller has sought refuge in the small town after a series of events left her devastated in her hometown of Boston. Her best friend from college, Tenley Morse, offers her a job. As a resident of the small town for a little over a year and a half she's still considered an outsider in the close knit community.
I do have to admit that author Lucy Lawrence has given her a really nice place to live. She lives in a year round waterfront cottage right on the edge of Morse Point Lake. I've always thought it would be kind of cool to live in a place like it since it would seem like a yearlong vacation.
Anyway, one April night she's sitting on her deck and she notices a steamer trunk floating in the water. After managing to get it ashore she's curious as to what treasure(s) might be inside and once she opens it finds the town mayor's body. Her landlord, Nate Williams, is the likely suspect. The mayor was trying to get potential investors to construct condominiums along the lake front and Nate was dead set against it (as is half the town).
There are many problems with the book. One of the major problems is an over abundance of characters all of which are terribly boring. I think every person in town is mentioned whenever the characters are talking. When gossipy older twins Ella and Marie are telling stories they have to mention a character's name, where they work and other details we really don't need to know.
The second problem I had was a lot of the characters have the same first initial. As an example there's Paul and Portia who are Brenna's neighbors. I think there's also a Patty in it and a Patrick is also mentioned. The third problem is the story never really moves forward.
A lot of old, useless information is brought up when the characters have already talked about it. After awhile it gets old. Then there's the crush Brenna all of a sudden discovers she has on Nate. But one night after snooping with Tenley they meet Dom Cappicola, a mobster's son who's trying to turn the family business around. So now we have a "love triangle" that's developed between Brenna, Nate and Dom. Of course Nate doesn't let his feelings show.
In my opinion the poor tree shouldn't have died for this book and if you're brave enough to read it you can always turn it into a decoupage project.
