Mystery Book Club Solves Murder

When the Ashton Corners (Alabama) Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society in Erika Chase's Read and Buried invited an award-winner novelist to their meeting, no one expected to be involved in murder. Derek Alton had been an award winner 18 years in the past, but he had a sequel planned that he claimed would be a blockbuster.

Club organizer Lizzie Turner meets with Derek over dinner to discuss the club members, but he becomes obnoxious and she leaves. The next day he arrives, remorseful, at Lizzie house. In a flash, someone shoots him through one of her windows.

Suspicion falls on Lizzie's friends.  Derek seems familiar to some of the residents of Ashton Corners, but no one recognizes his name. Lizzie and friends start digging and find out that Derek was not who he pretended to be. In the meantime Lizzie's boyfriend, Police Chief Mark Dreyfus, has been acting aloof and she doesn't know why.

The Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society members are a mixed bag of
people. They include reading specialist Lizzie,  the former police chief Bob Miller, third-grade teacher Sally-Jo Baker, local attorney Jacob Smith, grand dame of the community Molly Mathews, pregnant 19-year-old Stephanie Lowe and high school punk teen Andie Mason. Their love of mysteries and cheese straws (hence the name) has brought them together. They also act as a real-life mystery solving club.

I enjoyed this book and I am starting the next in the series. One of the elements I enjoyed most is the Reading List at the end of each book. Each chapter has a quote from a book and some of the characters talk about other books they have read. Having them listed at the back of the book gives readers an opportunity to find new authors. I only wish the recipe for cheese straws was included.

The first book in the series is A Killer Read.