Foul Play at the Fair (Celebration Bay Mystery, #1)

by Shelley Freydont

When a rotten apple spoils the local harvest festival, event coordinator Liv Montgomery becomes an unplanned amateur sleuth in the first mystery in the Celebration Bay series.

As more and more tourists flock to Celebration Bay, New York, to enjoy their seasonal festivals, the town is in need of a professional coordinator. Enter Manhattan event planner Liv Montgomery, tired of big-city stress and looking for an idyllic spot where she and her Westie terrier, Whiskey, can put down roots. The Harvest by the Bay Festival is Liv’s first chance to prove herself, and everything from apple bobbing to pumpkin painting goes perfectly—until the body of an itinerant juggler is discovered stuffed into an antique apple press.

With a murderer on the loose, town leaders threaten to shut down the upcoming Halloween and Christmas festivals. But the town’s livelihood is at stake, and there is no way Liv is going to let that happen, even if she has to solve the murder herself. No matter how many balls she needs to keep in the air, Liv is determined to find a killer who’s rotten to the core...

• ISBN10: 0425251551
• ISBN13: 9780425251553
• Publish Date: 4 September 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S.
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780425251553

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

A first in a new series, I liked this book. First books can often times be the weakest, but if that's the case here, I look forward to a very good series.

The story centers on Celebration Bay, a tourist town in NY. While I didn't get a very strong sense of the town itself, it's inhabitants were very well drawn and it was very easy to 'see' the individual personalities. There's a hint of future tension (of the good kind) between the main character, Liv and the newspaper editor.

The mystery, I thought, was very well done. Lots of suspects, as nobody liked the victim, and a few twists here and there. A red herring or two and a really good ending, to my way of thinking. It didn't feel like the tried and true used in so many cozies.

My only real beef with the book was the same one I have with a lot of mysteries - the over abundance of internal dialogue/speculation. I realise it's a device used to summarize the story to that point for the readers, but to me it's all a lot of very boring repetition. At one point, I actually skipped almost 3 pages and it was all internal dialogue meant to assist readers who I can only imagine must not have very strong reading comprehension skills.

I look forward to reading the next book.