Bells, Spells, and Murders (A Witch City Mystery, #7)

by Carol J. Perry

[MurderByDeath]

The book suffered on two fronts for me:  the story failed to capture my interest as much as previous books in the series, and the editing was so negligent that it fundamentally affected the plotting.   There's not really much I can say about the story itself; it was average.  A man who runs a vast charitable organisation in Salem Massachusetts is murdered in his office just before Christmas and Lee discovers his body when she arrives for a scheduled interview.  It wasn't the worst I've read, and it wasn't the best.  There never really was any question as to who was behind the crime, although the reveal at the end did have its own surprising twist.   The first indication that the editing was not up to professional standards was the repetition of comments made by the MC:  she tells the reader several times, for example, in almost identical words, that she knew her Corvette was impractical but she just loved it so much. (There was also a lot of brand-name mentions that felt gratuitous that I don't remember from previous books.)     The repetition wasn't so bad, but then the story continuity started breaking indicating, perhaps, major re-writes that didn't get followed up with another thorough proof-reading.  There's a whole scene about Lee writing out her Christmas cards that's specific down to the number of cards: 49 which is followed up by a scene the next day where she stands in line at the post office to mail them, along with her Christmas packages.  Approximately 50 pages later, Lee is telling her Aunt that she hasn't done her Christmas cards yet, and a scene follows where she goes through the whole process again.     Again, annoying but it wasn't until one of the suspects was an electrician, then suddenly he's a plumber, and then he was an electrician and a plumber, and the company names he works for keep getting swapped around.  At that point, I lost any and all faith that the book could recover and just finished it because I was trapped in a salon chair for the last bit of the book.    I might have one more of this series in the pile, and if so, I'll get around to it eventually, but unless it drastically improves on this one, I may take my leave of this series.