Murder, She Wrote: A Body in Boston by Jessica Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was such a fun mystery, set in a city near-and-dear to my heart: BOSTON 🧡💚
Murder, She Wrote: A Body in Boston is the 61st-installment of my all-time favorite Cozy Mystery series. It’s hard to believe that I have read 50-books in this series I started as a kid. The longest commitment of my life — LOL.
Some of you have probably seen me rave about it. I never shut up about this series. To me, it’s the epitome of what a Cozy Mystery should be.
After the passing of the original series author, Donald Bain, the series has been taken on by a few other talented authors. Of all of these, Terrie Farley Moran, the author of this book, has been my favorite.
I feel like Farley Moran has successfully captured the original tone and characterizations, sticking with the classic format that works so well for long-time fans of the series. You know what you’re getting when you pick up a MSW book and I appreciate that TFM hasn’t tried to change that.
In this installment, Jessica gets invited to give a lecture at the Boston Public Library. Seeing she has time in her schedule, and already knowing she loves the city, Jessica accepts and begins to make travel arrangements.
As luck would have it, her dear friend, Seth Hazlitt, the local doctor of Cabot Cove, is also planning a trip to Boston at the same time to see a friend, a fellow doctor. The two decide to travel together and make a full friends vaca out of it.
Once there, Jessica is quick to meet up with her other long-time friend, and roguish heartthrob, Harry McGraw. Harry is a PI, who has frequently used Jessica’s astute brain to his advantage on his cases.
Harry’s latest client is the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, but his good friend, Cookie, the bartender at his favorite watering hole, is also pressing him to look into his daughter’s boyfriend, Victor, who he can’t stand.
What’s a talented PI to do?
Before Harry and Jessica can get too involved in the Victor situation though, Cookie’s daughter, Aileen, arrives at her father’s bar, while Jessica is there waiting to speak to her, covered in blood. She claims to have just discovered Victor’s dead body at his apartment. She fled, not knowing what to do, but now she’s the BPDs number one suspect!
As friends of Cookie’s, Jessica, Harry and Seth are all seriously invested in seeing Aileen’s name cleared. They know the timid schoolteacher could never have killed someone in cold blood.
Digging in and getting adventurous, the dynamic trio will not rest until they figure out who actually killed Victor. It’s really too bad Jessica never gets a break, but with bodies dropping whenever she’s around, her high-powered deductive skills are always in demand.
A Body in Boston was a really enjoyable mystery. Of course I adored the setting being in Boston, but I also just loved the level of intrigue and very stellar amateur sleuthing that went on within these pages.
It was also so fun seeing Harry and Seth actually getting along for once instead of butting heads. They found a few things in common, and before you knew it, it was off to the races with an all new friendship.
Cookie and Aileen were equally well-developed characters, and I liked seeing a father-daughter relationship displayed in such a strong and positive way. I found the mystery itself, their relationship, and the lengths Cookie would go to for his daughter all quite believable.
There were a couple details, or areas, that slowed down the pace a little, but overall, I feel like this is a fabulous installment to this long-running series.
Thank you to the publisher, Berkley, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I hope with my whole heart that Terrie Farley Moran continues to contribute to this series, because no one does it like she does!