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Francine and Jonathan are posing for their "racy" photograph for a pin-up calendar and they are recreating a moment from family history at the same time. Apparently the daughter of a prominent family had the bad taste to fall in love with one of the servants; after consummating their love under a covered bridge during a rain storm, the servant was fired and the (pregnant) daughter married off to an amenable man several years her senior. Joy is doing a TV slot for the local Covered Bridge Festival, which is a great tie-in, thus enabling the photo shoot to be done in relative privacy. Until someone starts shooting from out of the adjacent cornfield. And somebody else winds up dead. That somebody turns out to be Francine's cousin William. Of course, Charlotte decides to "help" the police solve this crime. All of this takes place while Mary Ruth is trying to get another shot on The Food Channel by way of her fried corn fritters and other baked goods at the Festival, and her cohorts have been recruited to help her at the food stand. Life is a little crazy for the Bridge Club ladies.
This is the second in the Bucket List series, and rather a bit more ambitious in terms of story lines and plots than the first entry. While I'm not sure that some of the final plot points are truly possible, even in the world of "suspend your disbelief" that is part of writing fiction, I'm willing to grant the author poetic license in this matter. Not everyone may be so forgiving. The characters are believable, and the main characters are as capable of growth (albeit at differing rates) as any senior citizen is apt to be. Learning more about the backgrounds of these people makes them more knowable and therefore (at least in theory) more likable.
In spite of my inability to buy into some of the plot devices, I enjoyed this book. This says quite a bit about the writing skills of the author; good writing will keep me reading in spite of disbelief. I wanted to know what happened next, I wanted to see how far "out there" the story would go. Perhaps if confronted with the same facts that Francine was presented with, I'd have been forced to come to the same conclusions she did. Perona kept on building the case for the final result, and did it professionally and with great pacing as well as timing.
My only other negative reaction? There are no recipes included for the corn fritter donuts or the cinnamon rolls or any of Mary Ruth's delectable sounding baked goods. Seriously, Ms. Perona, what were you thinking??
§ I have been reading and reviewing mystery fiction for over a quarter of a century and read broadly within just about all genres and sub-genres. I have been a preliminary judge for the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Contest for at least 25 years. I live in Northern lower Michigan with my spousal unit, one large cat, and 2 fairly small dogs. My Sherlockian (BSI) nom-de-plume is VR; my license plate is BSI VR
Reviewed by PJ Coldren, June 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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