Retro Reading: Town in a Wild Moose Chase by B.B. Haywood

A third installment ushers in yet another festival! This time it's the annual Winter Moose Fest and the residents are excited for this dreary January festival.

In Town in a Wild Moose Chase hermit Solomon Hatch comes across a body in the woods and once again Candy Holliday finds herself investigating the cause of the murder. Even though she's been warned again by the local police chief to stay out of it.

The mystery gets deeper as Solomon disappears further into the woods and no one has claimed the unidentifiable body of the murder victim. Is it a local, or someone who has come into town to celebrate the festival? Candy's not certain and when she gets a mysterious call from one of the spinster Foxwell sisters she thinks she may be on to something.

While busy covering the festival events for her column, she's equally stunned at the appearance of a white moose. Solomon had laid claim on seeing it earlier and during the town parade, it strolls into the procession and comes over to Candy. Her friends joke that the moose is in love with her.

Again the pacing is rather slow but eventually things do start to come together (let's say that my mind did a lot of wondering). References to the first two installments begin to crop up and I really thought Haywood did a great job of capturing the winter feel. I did get a sense that maybe this is what winter in Maine could be like.

Now that the seed for this series has been planted I'm hoping that the payoff will eventually be worth it and as usual, there are recipes at the end of the book. As I'm not a cook, kudos go out to Haywood for the moose/mousse theme recipes!