read and buried

Title: Read and Buried

Author: Erika Chase aka Linda Wiken

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery

Series: Ashton Corners Book Club Mystery, Bk 2

ISBN: 9780425251782

Pages: 287 + "Reading Lists"

Obtained: Library copy

Comments:

Perhaps you remember how much the first book in this series, A Killer Read, thrilled me.  Read and Buried has all those same things going for it.  The reading specialist main character.  The book club.  The push at literacy and mention of the Rapid Reads line.  Quotes at the beginning of each chapter from a variety of mysteries.  With all this I was already biased going in.  I doubt I could possibly have disliked this book.

But that wasn't an issue...because I did enjoy this mystery.  An award winning author (a bit of a one-hit wonder) is in town and is (in a complicated fashion) invited to speak to the book club.  He's murdered before he ever has the chance.  And of course it takes place at a book club member's house and a book club member is suspect.  So once again, the Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society works together to discover who the real killer is.

I did kind of suspect the killer, but I did not guess why.  I had this whole entirely untrue theory going on in my head, and it took quite a bit to convince me that was not the case.  Even as that theory didn't occur to the characters at all.  Good thing, huh?  Who knows if the killer would have been caught if I'd been on scene. ;p  (I know this is fictional. Honest! No matter how the previous sounds.)

Things of note:

• This is a Canadian read!  An accidental one, but Canadian nonetheless. The author lives in Ontario.
• This book is set around Christmas.  It was real hard for that to stick with me, what with it being set in the south and not snowy (look at the cover).

I look forward to reading book 3, Cover Story, due out August 2013.