A Visit With an Old Friend in Maine

HALLOWEEN MURDER
Lucy Stone 3 & 16
Leslie Meier
Kensington Books
August 28, 2018

Halloween Murder is a reissue packaging two of the books in the long-running Lucy Stone Series. I have dipped into this series from time to time through the years for a cozy taking place in the Maine setting I enjoy so much. The first of the two books is Trick or Treat Murder, just after the birth of Lucy's fourth child, Zoe, and Lucy is still a stay-at-home mom. In Wicked Witch Murder, she is a new grandmother, and a reporter on the local paper, The Pennysaver. When I say long-running series, I'm not kidding. Over the course of the books, Lucy has never lost her insatiable curiosity, and her job has enabled that aspect of her character.

In Halloween Murder, Tinker's Cove is experiencing a spate of arson fires. Most have been minor, resulting in no injuries, until a summer resident who unexpectedly was in her showplace residence died in the fire that completely destroyed it. She was a close friend of Lucy and her husband, Bill, and the two are devastated. Lucy has her own ideas on who may be behind it, but there are plenty of suspects. Big-time development is encroaching on Tinker's Cove, and tensions are high between those pro and con.

The Wicked Witch Murder begins with a new resident in Tinker's Cove; Diana Ravenscroft, a self-proclaimed witch who has opened a Wiccan shop. Most of the townspeople laugh it off, but another new resident, Ike Stoughton, is very outspoken on the subject of witches, along the lines of "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." Lucy is not happy that her own teenage daughter is attempting spells under Diana's influence as well. Lucy, too, is the unlucky person who discovers a burned body tied to a tree when she was out walking her dog. That body belongs to a so-called wizard who is a close associate of Diana.

Leslie Meier always provides a good puzzler, with much-loved characters to back it up. I enjoy the family dynamics of the Stone family. The Stone kids are not perfect but are turning out to be solid citizens like their parents. I think I may have read both of the books in the past, but that did not detract from my enjoyment this time around. Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for an advance digital copy. The opinions are voluntary and my own.

RATING- 3.5 rounded up to 4 Stars