USA Today bestselling author Ellen Byron is back at it with fan-favorite plantation B&B owner Maggie Crozat in a fourth installment of the Cajun Country mysteries.
Southern charm meets the dark mystery of the bayou as a hundred-year flood, a malicious murder, and a most unusual Mardi Gras converge at the Crozat Plantation B&B.
It’s Mardi Gras season on the bayou, which means parades, pageantry, and gumbo galore. But when a flood upends life in the tiny town of Pelican, Louisiana—and deposits a body of a stranger behind the Crozat Plantation B&B—the celebration takes a decidedly dark turn. The citizens of Pelican are ready to Laissez les bon temps rouler—but there’s beaucoup bad blood on hand this Mardi Gras.
Maggie Crozat is determined to give the stranger a name and find out why he was murdered. The post-flood recovery has delayed the opening of a controversial exhibit about the little-known Louisiana Orphan Train. And when a judge for the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen pageant is shot, Maggie’s convinced the murder is connected to the body on the bayou. Does someone covet the pageant queen crown enough to kill for it? Could the deaths be related to the Orphan Train, which delivered its last charges to Louisiana in 1929? The leads are thin on this Fat Tuesday—and until the killer is unmasked, no one in Pelican is safe.
A simmering gumbo of a humorous whodunit, Mardi Gras Murder is the fourth piquant installment in USA Today bestselling author Ellen Byron’s award-winning Cajun Country mysteries.
Cozy mysteries are perfect when life feels hard and you want to escape somewhere that feels fairly uncomplicated, even if people are being murdered. This series, set in small town Louisiana, is one of the stronger ones to come out in recent years. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's got good bones, so to speak.
Mardi Gras Murder takes place very soon after a fairly catastrophic flood sweeps through, one that leaves behind the body of a John Doe. At first presumed to have been a victim of the flood waters, an autopsy reveals he was shot. As the town rebuilds and focuses on their Mardi Gras celebrations, a judge of the local beauty contest is also shot and killed, and in spite of any evidence, our MC Maggie has a gut feeling the two are related. Of course they are. After attempted murder is tried on another judge, Maggie starts looking for connections to the John Doe.
The beauty contest is a total red herring; that's not a spoiler either, as it's pretty obvious from the get go that it's meant to be. The real ties that kill are much more investing that a vapid beauty contest, though the ultimate motivation behind them is just as shallow and meaningless.
Still, the author writes a solid setting with strong characters - all of them, men and women, good and bad. If the plotting and murder motivations aren't as strong as they could be, they're surrounded by a lot that is. The backdrop and characters are why I probably rated this higher than I should, objectively speaking. But I got happily lost in backwater Louisiana for a day or two, and I'll happily get lost in it again, should the author write another.
Reading updates
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26 January, 2019:
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26 January, 2019:
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