Mission to Murder by Lynn Cahoon

[WaltBristow]

Mission to Murder, the second in the Tourist Trap Mystery series by Lynn Cahooh, is a quirky mix of mystery and romance. After reading it and the original in the series, Guidebook to Murder, I’m not sure which genre wins out.

Mission to Murder is light reading. It’s not a complex mystery that requires thinking. In fact, it’s probably best read when you don’t want to think.

We follow the continuing saga of Jill Gardner, owner of a coffee shop/book store in the central California coast as she gets mixed up in murder and various other crimes. Her boyfriend, the local cop, teases her about being suspect number one after she fights with the manager of a local attraction about the old brick wall in her backyard – that she thinks is from an old Spanish Mission. He tells her is going to destroy her. She yells (in public, of course) that “No matter what I have to do, you’re not getting away with this.”

The manager, naturally, ends up dead and the race is on to find out ‘who-dun-it’. Jill decides he “couldn’t have died from a heart attack because he had no heart. And if he’d slipped and fallen [into one of the Grecian baths], the eel part of his nature would have saved him from drowning.”

The book follows Jill, the amateur sleuth, as she tries to cross suspects off her list. Add in Amy (the town’s city planner, Jill’s best friend and “a California girl through and through” – “she reeked granola”), Esmeralda (the local fortune-teller and police dispatcher), Jill’s Aunt Jackie (who came out of semi-retirement in the last book to help run the coffee shop after losing her money in a local Ponzi scheme), Eric (the sleazy real estate developer who wants to build condos on the land where Jill lives) and his ‘lying, stealing, murdering girlfriend’ and a host of other colorful characters who make the reading easy on the eyes and really quite enjoyable. “Everyone did whatever they could to make ends meet in the small tourist town.”

Calhoon writes so casually that you almost think you’re there, watching the characters playing out their roles. “It’s not a rumor. Cindy told me and she heard it from Gladys, the church secretary. She’d overhead the girl’s folks telling Pastor Bill.” And then consider Esmeralda’s warning to Jill – “The Spirits are trying to contact you.” “I haven’t missed any calls…”

Quirky. But fun. And not so heavy on the romance that a guy can’t enjoy the story.

This review is based on a preview of the Kindle version set to be released on July 21, 2014.