by Diane Kelly
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780593333228
Series: Southern Home-brew Mystery #1
Publication Date: July 6, 2021
Pages: 295
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Berkley
The Hayes family has made moonshine in Chattanooga since the days of Prohibition, and Hattie is happy to continue the tradition, serving up fun, fruity flavors in mason jars for locals and tourists alike. All signs indicate her new ‘shine shop will be a smashing success. What’s more, mounted police officer Marlon Landers has taken a shine to Hattie. For the first time ever, the stars seemed to have aligned in both her work and romantic life. But when a body ends up on her store’s doorstep alongside a broken jar of her Firefly Moonshine, it just might be lights out for her fledgling business.
The homicide detective can’t seem to identify the person who killed the owner of a nearby bar. The only witness is Hattie’s longhaired gray cat, and Smoky isn’t talking. When the detective learns that the victim and Hattie had a heated exchange shortly before his murder, she becomes her prime suspect.
Lest Hattie end up behind bars like her bootlegging great-grandfather a century before, she must distill the evidence herself and serve the killer a swift shot of justice.
Sadly average, even for modern cozy mysteries.
I was drawn in by the premise – brewing is all the rage in cozies at the moment, but this was the first moonshine book I’ve seen, and I liked the cover.
Unfortunately, the characters were just a little too storybook-dimensional; the good ones were just too good and the bad ones were ridiculous. The MC started off being determined to ‘find the killer’ – which turns me off; I prefer the sleuths that are more inadvertent in their investigations. But Kelly then puts the MC in a perfectly plausible situation for investigating, so I thought it might be ok – and then she activates the TSTL trope and I was back to irritated. Top this off with a very childish grandfather and the whole thing just didn’t ring my bell.
Diane Kelly has written several previous series, and at least one of them was enjoyable, but this one is, despite its premise, just too formulaic.