I read Pelican Beach Murder recently as part of the Facebook group, Cozy Mystery Review Crew. If you like reading cozy mysteries, getting a free book and posting reviews, check them out. I really liked it. It is the second book in the Meg Miller Cozy Mystery series.
About: "
Meg and Tom Richards negotiate a house trade for the summer. She will get a beach cottage on Galveston Island facing the Gulf of Mexico, and Tom will house sit for her while he wraps up the Hillard case from A Dickens of a Crime. What begins as a relaxing get away, becomes more complicated as Meg meets a family of locals with a troubled past. Her closest temporary neighbor, Echo Charles is quirky and mysterious and, Meg decides, irritating.
Although Meg enjoys a visit from her best friend, Jean, and their outings on the island, she is distracted by her thoughts about her own mother's past, a history Meg knows nothing about. As she anticipates the birth of her first grandchild, she mourns the absence of her own maternal grandmother. She wants to make memories for Dorie's and Michael's child, but she realizes she's missed half of her own heritage and will have nothing to pass on from her mother's side of the family.
The relationships she discovers during her beach stay remind her of the dysfunction and exploitation of the Hillard twins in her own hometown. The personalities and their consequences strike a familiar chord for Meg and she's alert to every nuance in her conversations with the locals. It will be her ability to form relationships and follow her intuition that will help Meg flesh out the murderer, and again, it will disappoint her to know the consequences of neglected relationships.
Scenic, historic Galveston Island, Texas is the setting for a cozy mystery reminiscent of the best in amateur sleuthing. This story will set the stage for Meg's next adventure and road trip to discover mysteries from her own family's history.
This is the first book I have read by this author. I loved the character Meg and her friend Jean. Meg is a retired librarian. Both Meg and Jean are widows. They are people I would want to hang out with. Two retired women, enjoying their retirement and grandchildren.
Meg's neighbor at the beach house keeps popping up at Meg's rental several times and making a nuisance of herself. Everyone in town seems a little off and Meg has no problem telling them when she has had enough of them. She is very practical and doesn't put up with any nonsense. Then someone is found murdered on the beach. Meg can't help but try to figure out what happened. It's a good mystery that escalates at the end to some thrilling moments. I don't want to say too much.
As a person with interest in genealogy, (me) there is a very interesting thread in the story with Meg not really knowing anything about her family history, that provides a really good ending that leads into the next book, which I will be reading
About the author:
"Phyllis was born and raised in south Texas. Small town, rural settings are what she knows best, but she loves being in the city and imagining the characters that inhabit the dense population...Phyllis is a retired social worker and former owner/operator of a small bed and breakfast. She’s lived in the rural areas and cities of south Texas. She currently lives on Galveston Island .Phyllis H. Moore was in her sixties before she published her first book. Yeah, a late bloomer. She has a master's degree in social work and retired from thirty years in the field to own and operate a bed and breakfast for seven years. Those experiences gave her inspiration for settings and characters to populate several novels. She remembers the fifties fondly and some things about the seventies."
Here is a link to the author's page if you would like to read more about her and her books. There are several and they look good.
https://www.phyllishmoore.com/
I received a free copy and voluntarily provided this review.
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