Easter Bonnet Murder
Known for its cheerful staff and elaborate annual Easter Bonnet Contest, the Heritage House senior center regularly attracts new residents and positive press. But once the town’s retired librarian, Miss Julia Tilley, checks in to recover from an illness, Lucy sees a side of the facility that isn’t quite so perfect and pristine. And the place may soon be making headlines for different reasons following an unexplained disappearance…
Lucy can’t fathom how Agnes Neal could go missing from assisted living over a silly Easter bonnet contest or why few seem concerned as signs point to foul play. A retired journalist with an independent mind, Agnes had an eye for details and little interest in conforming to catty cliques or rules set by her caretakers, traits that threatened some and angered others.
While police stall the investigation without answers, Lucy realizes backstabbing has no age limit when alarming parallels bloom between her daughter’s college frenemies and social circles at Heritage House. Gathering clues as flimsy as a half-eaten milk chocolate bunny, Lucy must hop to it and discover what happened to Agnes before her own story becomes another springtime tragedy left unsolved.
The Details
Series: A Lucy Stone Mystery – Book #28
Author: Leslie Meier
Genre/Category: Cozy – Holiday/Reporter
Publisher: Kensington Cozies
ISBN: 1496733738
Page Count: 256
Rating: 
The Review
I have enjoyed the “A Lucy Stone Mystery” series for a long time. The characters are usually warm, kind, and filled with the spice of life. The setting is always picture-perfect and detailed enough to make readers want to visit. However, I had issues with Easter Bonnet Murder. The idea of retired people enjoying their days hiking, bird watching, doing creative things is inspiring. Add in a holiday, Easter, and what could go wrong, chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and pretty dresses are still looked forward to, even at any age? However, as readers interact with the characters, they soon realize that a beloved returning character is in trouble. The main character, Lucy, is investigating a missing person who is eventually located dead.
Suspects in this story are plentiful, and most seem to have good, or at least relatively normal motives. However, given the Easter theme, the contentious bonnet contest, and possible corporate fraud, the motive may not be all that important; anyone could have a reason for the victim to go missing or be murdered. Evidence is sparse, during much of the story, no one even knows that there is a victim; even Lucy isn’t certain.
A retirement community filled with cliques, intense competition, and a few too many possibilities for other crimes makes for a nice story, but this is also the problem. There is just too much of it all. Figuring out who the killer is and what is happening at the senior center is like banging your head against a brick wall, not in a fun way. If it were just not being able to pick out the killer, I would admit defeat and be happy that the author was able to stump me. But in this case, it was more a fact that none of it made sense. Towards the end of the book, readers will realize that the killer can only be one person and that several people knew all along and said nothing. This may give the readers resolution, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Easter bonnets are created, the contest won, and the crime solved, but the questions don’t necessarily end with the last page. For instance, how could any of it have happened without someone at some time having checked the backgrounds of all the suspects, or in the case of this murder, why aren’t the police doing anything at all?
For me, there was just a little too much going on that was not plausible, and the motive of the actual killer was not very realistic. The clues, what there were of them, really didn’t seem to tie into the murder and the red herrings were practically nonexistent. I enjoy Leslie Meier’s writing and always have, but I am beginning to think that it’s time for this series to end or somehow evolve into something more memorable. I did not like Zoe, Lucy’s youngest daughter in this story, and she has been getting worse with each book; she is selfish, uncaring, and immature. Even Lucy’s husband appears to be a bit character at this point. I hope this series doesn’t end with Easter Bonnet Murder; I’d like to see it go out on a far better theme than an Easter bonnet competition between mean old ladies. And, I never want to read about Miss Tilly dying, ever! Nevertheless, there are entertaining parts to this book and even moments of intense emotion, and for those reasons only, I will read the next addition to this series.
The Author
Leslie started writing in the late ‘80s when she attended graduate classes at Bridgewater State College. She wanted to become certified to teach high school English, and one of the required courses was Writing and the Teaching of Writing. Her professor suggested that one of the papers she wrote for that course was good enough to be published, and she sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories. She received $100 for the story, and she has been writing ever since. The teaching, however, didn’t work out.
Leslie’s books draw heavily on her experience as a mother of three and her work as a reporter for various weekly newspapers on Cape Cod. Her heroine, Lucy Stone, is a reporter in the fictional town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, where she lives in an old farmhouse (quite similar to Leslie’s on Cape Cod!) with her restoration carpenter husband Bill and four children. As the series has progressed, the kids have grown older, roughly paralleling Leslie’s own family. They seem to have reached a point beyond which Lucy cannot age–Leslie’s editor seems to want her to remain forty-something forever, though Leslie has to admit she is dying to write “Menopause is Murder!”
Leslie has five fabulous grandchildren. She and her husband enjoy dividing their time between Braintree and Cape Cod, along with their cat, Sylvester.
Readers will enjoy other books from the “Lucy Stone Mystery” series, including Halloween Murder and the delightful British Murder.
Represented by: The Jane Rotrosen Agency
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