Minor celebrity sleuth Mimi Goldman is attending her first classic book club meeting alongside a number of other local luminaries including a holier-than-thou minister, a musician, a nurse, a preschool teacher and a cleaner. After an enjoyable discussion about “Pride and Prejudice”, Mimi calls in to see the slightly more famous local celebrity Emmy Diner, daughter of the book club host Harriet and a successful true crime podcaster who has retired early to her room. When her mother tries to wake her she is unable to. Emmy is dead. Presumed murdered. But who is the guilty party? Mimi has her suspicions and some of those are targeted at the seemingly mild mannered members of the book club.
The most recent episodes of Emmy’s podcast “Murders in Our Backyard” had been focused on the case of a missing girl. Had Emmy come up with information about the cold case that caused somebody to take her out? Judging by the message boards dedicated to the show, listeners are piling on to suspicious cop Don D’Angelo, but as Mimi starts to question the facts she is less than convinced.
EVIL FOR EVIL is Deb Pines’ tenth book in her hugely popular Chautauqua Mysteries series. Regular readers won’t be surprised to find that it’s exceptionally well plotted with instantly relatable characters who converse in sharp, witty dialogue. Anybody new to the character of Mimi Goldman will feel instantly at home in her company. Mimi’s sleuthing techniques hark back to the classic Miss Marple style. She is patient yet pointed and her seemingly innocuous probing of suspects yields surprising results. She’s also not afraid to use modern communication tools like e-mails and text messages to instantly progress her case. And with this particular mystery hinging on the thoroughly contemporary phenomenon of the true crime podcast EVIL FOR EVIL is that rare thing of being simultaneously old-fashioned and very much of the moment. Pines’s great skill is in keeping her readers guessing with various side tracks and red herrings while always ensuring that there is a logic and inevitability in the answers that her amateur detective eventually uncovers. This results in a wholly satisfying experience akin to the best whodunnit novels such as classic Agatha Christie or books by contemporary writers such as Elly Griffiths or Lucy Foley.
Deb Pines’ EVIL FOR EVIL is an excellent modern murder mystery with a carefully structured plot featuring a maze of contradictions and confusion leading to a completely satisfying reveal.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader