Review: "Murder on Charity Lane," Jo Nichols

Golda Barkofsky, 82, the sharp-eyed fairy godmother who owns the Marigold Cottages in Santa Barbara, California, is back. So are her energetic and eclectic tenants.

Murder is not far behind.

In The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective, the tenants of the quaint bungalow court reluctantly teamed up to solve a case. Now they’re a solid band of crime-fighting buddies—with, to put it euphemistically, a flexible moral compass.

They solve cases their way.

It all starts off so innocently. Mrs. B brings CJ into the group, in hopes that she’ll hit it off with tenant Ocean, an artist and mother to Riley and Miles. CJ helps Mrs. B fasten her bra after water aerobics class at the Y. Now there’s an endorsement! CJ works as an assistant to the fabulously wealthy Frank DeYoung. The elderly man lives with his wife Karina in an amazing house on Charity Lane in swanky Hope Ranch.

Learning this, Mrs. B has another idea. She gets CJ to invite tenants Sophie, recently promoted to development director at the New Vic Theatre, and Nicholas, a city planner (they’re now a couple and living together) to a party at the DeYoungs' house. Maybe Sophie can rustle up some donations.

Instead, Sophie and Nicholas witness a horrible event. Frank DeYoung is killed when he falls down the stairs. And his wife claims CJ pushed him.

CJ, who has just moved into Sophie’s old cottage.

Detective Sergeant Vernon Enible is not amused that the Murder Collective is involved with another possible murder. But he can’t stop them. The whole gang is involved. 

Lily-Ann brings her organizational skills (and knowledge of the wealthy, and exquisite fashion sense). Anthony contributes his physical strength and knowledge of the seedier side of life (he’s an ex-con).

Hamilton, who serves kombucha at Collective meetings and never leaves the house except for medical appointments, extracts information from a police officer through favors on the online fantasy game Realm of Rangers, which they both play.

The stakes soar when Mrs. B uses the Marigold as collateral to get CJ out of jail. Then CJ disappears. Then there’s a second murder…

In between the non-stop action, the members of the Collective try to communicate via group chat (Anthony can’t type, which leads to amusing spell-check corrections) and take risks even they know they shouldn’t be taking.

In the end, they tie up all the loose ends in their own inimitable style. Detective Enible is happy to take the win.

I enjoyed the humor in this book, the sparkling “SoCal” setting, and the warmth of the relationships among the characters. The story is told in alternating viewpoints by various characters, who are all so different, but all dedicated to their shared vision of justice. They also truly care about each other.

Spoiler alert: Many mentions are made to the events in The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective. That’s necessary because the characters are still grappling, to varying degrees, with how they handled the situations in the first book.

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I received an advance e-copy of Murder on Charity Lane from NetGalley. It will be published on August 18, 2026.

Review: "A Field Guide to Murder," Michelle L. Cullen

Harry Lancaster, 69, has traded world travel for a condo on the deceptively peaceful Lakeside Lane in Columbus, Ohio. He’s a retired anthropologist who once traveled the world with his wife, Mags, working for aid organizations.

Now Mags is gone and Harry has fractured his hip. Help has arrived in the form of a young nurse, Emma Stockton. She’s burned out from her former work in critical care, and is giving caregiving a try.

Harry is frustrated by his limited mobility and entertains himself by keeping an eye on the neigborhood with his high-powered binoculars. But his boredom is soon alleviated when his neighbor Sue calls. She’s in distress. Harry and Emma rush over (as best he can with his cane), but Sue is dead when they arrive.

The police decide Sue accidentally ate a poison fungi—she liked to forage. But Harry isn’t convinced. He’s noticed strange goings-on. His previously genial neighbors are acting suspiciously. Nobody seemed to like Sue, so suspects abound.

When a second neighbor is attacked, Harry is devastated, but knows he’s on the right track.

Emma is reluctant at first to join Harry in his sleuthing, but she can’t very well let him charge around on his own. Besides, she’s feeling at loose ends with her career move, and she’s having qualms about her upcoming marriage to Blake, a handsome doctor who seems to be a Prince Charming.

Harry has lived a life of adventure and loves exotic foods. Emma’s idea of a perfect meal is a pepperoni and pineapple pizza at her favorite restaurant. But they learn from each other. Harry starts thinking about life after recovery—and he’s also determined to get Emma out of her rut.

A real pleasure of A Field Guide to Murder is the relationship between this mismatched pair. Harry — adventurous, cosmopolitan, a devoted eater of Indian, French, and Ethiopian cuisine — is bemused by Emma’s devotion to pepperoni-and-pineapple pizza. They needle each other, learn from each other, and slowly draw each other out of their respective ruts. 

The supporting cast of neighbors-with-secrets keeps things lively, and the setting is attractive: Harry can walk, cane and all, from his seemingly idyllic street straight into a bustling commercial district. I enjoy food descriptions in my mysteries, and this one features several, including a yummy afternoon tea scene.

This cozy mystery is warm, engaging and well-plotted. I finished it with a smile—and a snack.

From Here: Observing the Natural World

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The Trouble With Naming Squirrels ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I feed peanuts to my backyard squirrels to keep them away from the bird feeders.

That’s the theory, anyway.

It does keep them busy for a while. It does prevent them from emptying the feeders on a daily basis.

Mostly, though, my peanut feeding is a source of entertainment, especially during the winter.

I enjoy watching the squirrels scurry around me, at a distance, as I throw out the peanuts. Later, from the house, I see some of them grab the peanuts, then sit on their haunches and munch them. Others disappear to parts unknown to bury them or enjoy them in solitude.

Sometimes I know exactly where they’ve gone. When Paul finishes using a stack of firewood, there are always peanuts and shells tucked among the bottom logs and strewn on the ground.

The best moments are when one of the squirrels comes up to me for a treat. I was so charmed when the first fuzzy rodent approached me that I named him Owen.

He came running up to me several times over the course of the month. At least, I think it was him. How would I really know? As Paul likes to say, the squirrels don’t wear name tags.

Then, just as suddenly, Owen stopped coming.

I was sad, but told myself that he, in his squirrel way, had moved on. He had probably started a family in a nearby yard.

When, a few weeks later, a squirrel ran up, looked up at me and accepted a peanut a foot from my feet, I was pleased. But I did not name him. Or her.

I have since decided that “my” squirrels move through my life the way they move through the yard—quickly, lightly, and without much regard for any attempts to keep track of them.

These days, I’ve made my peace with the arrangement. I toss the peanuts. The squirrels  come and go. We share a moment, and that is enough.

This morning, a little guy approached me tentatively. I threw a peanut at my feet, but he didn’t come any closer. Then he snapped up the one I threw about two feet away. He sat up on his haunches, just adorable.

I noticed he was missing some fur around his middle. Maybe I should call him “Scruff.”

Then again, maybe not. 

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 I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com

Review: "Storm Tide," Paul Doiron

When NetGalley sends me an invitation to download the upcoming Mike Bowditch novel, I do not hesitate to say yes. And then start reading. Immediately.

The Maine game warden is back on patrol duty after his shenanigans in Canada in Pitch Dark. Will he ever return to investigator status? The question hovers over Mike for the entire book.

It depends on whether he can keep his nose clean, and fans of the series know that though Mike has grown more mature over the years, sticking to the straight and narrow is impossible for him.

This is true even though he’s stationed close to home in the Belfast-Camden area. Wife Stacey is expecting. Billy Cronk and family live nearby. Wolf dog Shadow prowls his outdoor refuge. If only Mike could be content with living a quiet life.

Nope. He responds to a fire at a McMansion. A neighbor, Karen Kershaw, stands outside the burning building, holding a baby. Mike tries to save the father, but fails. He’s devastated, but then learns the man was implicated in a child’s disappearance and likely death.

Mike wants to investigate the fire, even though it’s a state police matter. But when he tries to question the neighbor, she disappears. Meanwhile, he starts getting ominous messages from somebody who knows a lot about him. In fact, the stalker seems to have interacted with Mike when he covered the Machias area, a decade or more ago.

Mike is determined to find out what’s happening in both situations. Are they connected? He’s not exactly reckless, but he does take chances, and gets himself (and Billy) in trouble (to put it mildly) more than once.

But has he ever faced three villains before? One is an evil genius, the worst kind of bad guy. Then there’s the huge, dim-witted but single-minded thug. The third thinks he has a moral agenda, and that includes killing Mike if necessary.

And what about the mysterious neighbor, Karen Kershaw? How does she fit into all this?

Whew. Luckily for my blood pressure, the story is stretched out over nearly a year. The brief interludes of calm (a visit to Charley and Ora Stevens’ homestead always soothes me) don’t thwart the pacing of the book. It’s a page-turner, with the hair-raising scenes nicely (thankfully) complemented by the characters beloved by readers and the richly evoked Maine setting.

Take the scene where Mike is in the headquarters of Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, just across the Kennebec River from where I write. He gazes out a window and sees a sturgeon leap out of the water.

After everything Mike endures in these pages, a flash of the unexpected and beautiful feels exactly right. It’s the kind of detail that stays with you long after you turn the final page.

 

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Storm Tide will be released on June 30, 2026.