The Legend of Sleepy Harlow / Kylie Logan

 

4 out of 5 stars

Halloween Bingo 2022

The perfect cozy mystery for Halloween! The Literary Ladies carve pumpkins, wear costumes, and support each other through a third murder investigation. I loved the creation of a headless ghost to echo their book club selection The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Kylie Logan writes a good mystery.

Only one thing really annoyed me: at the beginning of the book, Chandra's cat, Jerry Garcia, pees on a manuscript that Bea is proofreading for Marianne. Now, you'd think that an animal the size of a horse or a cow had let loose on this pile of paper. Cats are small, relatively speaking. Annoyed googling resulted with the estimation of a cat's bladder capacity at 3 to 5 tablespoons. Yes, it would be stinky (I've gagged over a litterbox or two). But Logan has it pouring all over the manuscript, the porch chair, and Bea's shoes. Five tablespoons (let's give Jerry the maximum volume, yes?) is unlikely to do this much damage. Perhaps growing up on a farm has made me impervious to some grossness, but I would have poured off the pee and then hung the pages on a line to dry. The manuscript would not be completely ruined. And yes, I know why Logan wrote it that way—to give Bea a reason to investigate the history of the rumrunner, Sleepy Harlow. (And you can tell how much this bugged me by the length of this rant!)

Once things got rolling, I forgave the urinary exaggeration and just enjoyed how things rolled out. I was somewhat disheartened that these women, who are usually so tight, were divided in this outing. Kate seems to just collapse, Chandra acts extra weird, and Marianne needs emergency medical care on the mainland. Only Luella is steady as she goes and willing to help Bea. However, everyone is exonerated by the end (come on, this is a cozy, of course none of them have gone over to the dark side, this is NOT a spoiler.)

I'm happy to say I still have two books to go in this series. Next month for Appointment with Agatha, we are reading And Then There Were None, which I plan to follow with And Then There Were Nuns.