Crime and Punctuation by Kaitlyn Dunnett

 

Deadly Edits Mystery #1

280 pages

Publisher: Kensington

 

Blurb

After splurging to buy her childhood home in the Catskills, recently widowed Mikki Lincoln emerges from retirement as a freelance editor. With her ability to spot details that others fail to see, it's not long before Mikki earns clients--and realizes that the village of Lenape Hollow isn't the thriving tourist destination it was decades ago. Not with a murderer on the loose . . .

When perky novice writer Tiffany Scott knocks at her door holding a towering manuscript, Mikki expects another debut novel plagued by typos and sloppy prose. Instead, she finds a murder mystery ripped from the headlines of Lenape Hollow's not-too-distant past. The opening scene is a graphic page-turner, but it sends a real chill down Mikki's spine after the young author turns up dead just like the victim in her story . . .

Mikki refuses to believe that Tiffany's death was accidental, and suspicions of foul play solidify as she uncovers a strange inconsistency in the manuscript and a possible motive in the notes. Then there's Tiffany's grandmother and husband, who aren't exactly on friendly terms over the local area's planned rejuvenation efforts . . .

Unable to convince police that they are focused on the wrong suspect, Mikki must rely on her keen eyes to catch the truth hidden in Lenape Hollow. As she gets closer to cracking the case, only one person takes Mikki's investigation seriously--the cunning killer who will do anything to make this chapter of her life come to a very abrupt ending . . .

 

Review

This was my first cosy mystery in ages. I used to read them all the time and enjoyed them thoroughly. As my 3-star (3.5 really, but that option's not available) rating indicates, I wasn't overly impressed with this story. I'm not sure if that is because this simply isn't a very good cosy or because I've outgrown the genre. Only time (and more cosy mysteries) will tell, I guess.

Without going into the details of this mystery I blame my reservations about this story on the following. Descriptions were too frequent, detailed, and, as far as I could tell, mostly irrelevant. The identity of the killer didn't come as a (huge) surprise. It felt like a lot of information was repeated time and again. And I didn't really warm to Mikki Lincoln and didn't quite buy her motivation for investigating the mysterious death either.

While I like the idea of a punctuation rule being the primary clue in this mystery, it wasn't enough to carry the whole story for me especially since a lot was made of the manuscript in question only for it to reveal little to nothing. In fact, a lot of questions posed by that document remained unanswered by the end of the story.

I’m fairly sure I’ll read more cosy mysteries in the future. Whether I’ll read more stories in this series or other books by Kaitlyn Dunnett remains to be seen.