Grave Errors (A Witch City Mystery, #5)

by Carol J. Perry

Whose funeral will be next?
 
For residents of Salem, Massachusetts, the day after Halloween brings empty candy wrappers, sagging pumpkins, and a community-wide identity crisis. That is, until Lee Barrett’s TV production class suggests extending the spooky season with the traditional Mexican celebration Dia de Los Muertos. But when the students discover not all of Salem’s dead are resting in peace, the post-October blues don’t seem so bad after all . . .
 
As if a series of haunting graveyard visits isn’t disturbing enough, Lee and her policeman boyfriend connect the crime to an unsolved missing person case. Driven by a series of chilling psychic visions, Lee calls on her cleverest allies—including her shrewd cat, O’Ryan—to go underground and dig up the evidence needed to put a lid on a cold case forever . . . before the latest headstone in town has her name on it!
 
Praise for the Witch City Mysteries

“Perfectly relaxing and readable.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“This rewarding paranormal cozy series debut will have Victoria Laurie fans lining up to follow.” —Library Journal
 
“[A]n entertaining story that keeps readers guessing until the very twisted and eerie end.” —RT Book Reviews

• ISBN10: 1496707176
• ISBN13: 9781496707178
• Publish Date: 29 August 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Kensington Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9781496707178

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

When you read enough books in one genre, you start to get a feel for the different styles of different publishers, and I've definitely read enough cozies to recognise patterns.  Kensington, for instance, tends to publish authors with creative stories and strong characters, but are almost always too light-handed with the editing.  Just enough to notice it but mostly not so bad you can't enjoy the story anyway.     Grave Errors is a good example.  Lee is a strong, independent, likeable female protagonist with intelligence, who has an unwelcome gift for scrying that she can't control.  Instead of going all woe is me! she takes steps to deal with it.  She gets along with all the other characters and isn't TSTL.   The book (and series) has no love triangles, just a nice, subtle sub-plot romance that makes Lee's involvement in mysteries feasible and lends an additional air of well-adjustedness.  The story is set in Salem Massachusetts, which lends its atmosphere to a variety of plots.  And finally, the mystery is decently plotted.  Even though I think it was pretty obvious who the villain was from almost the start, the story behind the motive was, to me, so much more interesting.    But man, this could have been so much better if it had been more tightly edited.  Small things, like red-lining blue-lining* the author's tendency to mention Pete's (the BF) discomfort with Lee's visions every time she tells him about one.  There were at least 6 visions in this book, and I'd gotten a clear idea of Pete's discomfort with them after the first 2.     At one point she refers to a hurricane heading their way named Penelope, with top sustained winds of 60mph.  Storms aren't categorised as hurricanes until they reach a sustained wind speed of 74mph.  I get that as a Florida girl, that's something I'm going to pick up on more than a lot of readers, but it's a simple google search - you don't even have to leave the results page to find it.   I'm not trying to discourage cozy readers from reading this - it's a good story and I really enjoyed it.  But at a time when I feel like most cozies are turning into completely vapid crap, Kensington shows so much promise, publishing stories that are both cozy and interesting to readers that value intelligence in their fiction.  If only they weren't quite so stingy with their red blue* pencils.     *Editors actually use blue pencils.  I did not know that.  But I googled it.  ;-)

[Eve1972]

I straight up love this cover. It's super cute. A great representation of the story. Fabulous use of graphics. The composition is fairly good (I would have moved the title a bit more to the right). It's colorful and I love the title work.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I will say that the cover and synopsis led me to believe this would be more Halloween centric than it actually turned out be. Despite being a bit bummed out about the lack of the Halloween backdrop this one managed to pull me in and keep me turning the pages.



I found it to be pretty well written and nicely paced. It was pretty obvious who the baddie was going to be from early on, so I can't say that took me by surprise. The author does throw in a couple of red herrings though to keep it interesting. There is a great cast of secondary characters. Including a cat that acts just a teeny bit human like.

There really isn't any romance per se in this one. Lee has a boyfriend Pete that features heavily in the book. They are already an established couple which I rather liked because sometimes the romance aspect of these cozy mysteries can feel forced. I also found Lee to be a very likable main character. Lastly, there are some super yummy recipes included. What more can you ask for? Two thumbs up from yours truly.