Three Sisters
An Emily Castles Mystery #1
By Helen Smith
Tyger Books, Feb 2011
104 pages, ebook, paperback
Cozy mystery
✮✮✮⭑
I purchased this at the current price. This is my honest review for which I receive no compensation of any kind.
And now the reveal…
The cover is pink and really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the story at all.
The story is entertaining and the characters are sort of hit or miss. The pace is quite brisk with the feeling of a funhouse, which is totally appropriate to the story. The tension is constant and sky-high til the end.
Emily’s dog has recently died and she’s feeling very sad. She’s been invited to a neighborhood party and she’s thinking about going. It’s at an abandoned house that’s really a mansion with large gardens and fruit orchards. The people that have moved into the property are like circus people.
At the party, Emily meets Chris, who seems to be in charge somewhat, and Joe or Joszef, who seems to be in love with Zizi, one of the three knife-throwing sisters. She also meets Zsa-zsa, who ends up dead and in the sarcophagus. She’s another of the three sisters. She meets Dr. Muriel, who is a psychiatrist who gets locked in the cellar with Emily late in the game. Elise tries to warn Emily of danger. Midori is a red herring who eats his food too fast and drinks his booze too fast and has too many nerves.
Emily thinks she hears a dog barking for help, a scared dog. So she follows the sound and finds Sam, Chris’ dog, who is afraid of fireworks according to Chris. She finds him in the basement. What she sees in the basement sends her off to talk with Dr. Muriel. The two of them get tied up in the basement and the sarcophagus in the parade being carried toward the huge bonfire. In the end, the parade is stopped and the two women are rescued.
It’s all a bit bizarre being circus people living in an abandoned mansion with murder involved. Not terribly inclined to read any more in this series.
a thoughtful reveal 