Death of an Obnoxious Tourist by Maria Hudgins. From Library Journal: "Dotsy Lamb and her friend Lettie are on a tour of Italy when the msot hated member of their tour group, Meg Bauer, is murdered in her Florence hotel room. Suspicion runs rampant but soon falls upon her sister Beth, who has a number of reasons to kill her. But another death soon has Dotsy poking her nose where she should not and the reader trying to guess who did it." A pleasant read which includes a little romance, a enjoyable visit to Florence, a despicable victim, but too many suspects to keep track of.
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Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear. From Library Journal: "This fourth installment in the Maisie Dobbs historical mystery series finds our fearless psychologist/inquiry agent investigating the death of artist Nick Bassington-Hope. According to Detective Inspector Stratton, Nick's fall from a set of scaffolding was merely a tragic accident. Nick's twin sister, Georgina, however, insists he was murdered and hires Maisie to discover the truth. Maisie's probing questions and careful listening skills bring her close to danger as she uncovers a series of events leading back to World War I." A fine addition to the series in which the consequences of poverty can lead to a child's death and fascism is starting to rear it's ugly head.
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No Rest for the Wicket by Donna Andrews. From Publishers Weekly: "An all-too-competitive game of "eXtreme croquet" set in an obstacle-ridden cow and sheep pasture in Caerphilly, Va leads to murder in Andrews's seventh Meg Langslow mystery. When Meg chases an errant shot into a gully, she discovers the fresh corpse of a woman with her head bashed in. Meg starts with a long list of suspects involved in a local campaign against developers who hope to transform the bucolic pasture area into an outlet mall." For the most part, Ms. Andrews' Meg Langslow series are eXtremely silly but nevertheless fun to read. For fans of cozies who like their mysteries with fairly bizarre characters and situations.
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Still as Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor. From Booklist. "Sweeney St. George, funerary art expert and amateur sleuth, has a problem: one of the key pieces of an exhibit she's curating for a Harvard art museum has gone missing. When she tries to find it, Sweeney discovers that a student who had been researching the missing piece died under suspicious circumstances. And, as (bad) luck would have it, she, too, stumbles on the same information that got the young man killed. To save herself, Sweeney must solve a two-decades-old murder." Not as tightly plotted as previous novels in this series and Sweeney is still having problems getting her act together as far as her love life is concerned.
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