Murder by Death

Generally a very good cozy series; one of my favorite.  This one was not its best entry.

Harlow is making custom aprons for each of the members of the local Red Hat Society, and the morning after delivering her first apron, she finds their leader dead in a cemetery, a victim of murder.  The victim's sister, knowing Harlow is, to paraphrase, 'good at solving these things' asked her to 'investigate'.

Now, this is a general rant about cozies and not specific to this one: but if we're already suspending disbelief enough to read a cozy mystery, can we just dispense with the acknowledgement that said amateur sleuth seems to solve a lot of murders?  I hate when the author feels like they need to include the "request" that includes the whole acknowledgment of past capers.  It just feels stupid to me.  /rant over

I love the characters and love Harlow and Will together.  The author just writes people you want to be friends with.  But I lost patience with the number of times Ms. Bourbon felt the need to summarise the plot and the suspects and the evidence for/against their guilt.  This took place at least 4 times (possibly 6) from beginning to end and the repetition drove me nuts.  She also had a character (Georgia) who wan't in a scene contributing dialog to it.

Finally, I knew who the murderer was from almost the very beginning; page 158 confirmed it, which was just past 50%.  It was so obvious, in fact, that I kept thinking I must be wrong - it was too obvious.

Oh well, I enjoyed visiting Bliss and catching up with the characters.  Not every series entry is a winner, and I'll still happily look out for the next one.