The Widows’ Guide to Skulduggery by Amanda Ashby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
The Widows’ Guide to Skulduggery is the 3rd-book in Amanda Ashby’s Cozy Mystery series, The Widows’ Detective Club.
As the name suggests, the stories center around a group of older women, all widowed, who work together and end up solving mysteries in their local area. Our MC is Ginny Cole, who after recently losing her husband, moves to the village of Little Shaw looking for a fresh start.
We get all of the stories from Ginny’s perspective and I think Ashby has done an incredible job building out her character. I adore her so much.
When Ginny moves to the area, she gets a new job at the local library, and also gets befriended by a group of women, who really take her under their wings, as she begins the process of trying to move on with her life after the loss of her beloved husband.
At this point, she’s solved a couple of cases with her friends and they’re all becoming quite comfortable with their new labels as amateur sleuths.
The mystery kicks off at wedding, when the canine ringbearer uncovers a skull that happens to have belonged to a local woman who was killed 20-years prior.
The wedding was already tense, as the two families hail from rival villages, so the skull is the nail in the coffin so to speak. The police get called in, and the ceremony gets called off.
Ginny and the rest of the widow detectives feel terribly for their young friend who has called off her wedding. They suspect that someone may have placed the skull there purposefully in order to break the couple up, but who would do such a terrible thing?
With a few suspects in mind, they kick off another stellar investigation, which ends up spanning 2-towns, 2-decades and involves a colorfully-catty set of characters.
While I wouldn’t say the mystery of this 3rd-installment, was the most intriguing for me, probably my least favorite of the series thus far, TBH, I’m nevertheless so comfortable with this group of characters at this point, I hardly minded.
I like being with them. I’d be down for any mystery they want to get involved in. Additionally, I feel like every series has books you connect with more than others, and even though this wasn’t my favorite, it was still a lot of fun.
It could just be that it is a different sort of mystery. It doesn’t read as a straight up murder mystery from the start, though it does eventually turn in that direction.
I’m genuinely pleased with it overall. It got wild, and I loved how the Widows really put themselves out there in this one. They were each following leads, thinking on their feet and working together in a super compelling way.
Thank you, Storm Publishing, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I am quite fond of this series at this point, and as mentioned, love the women in this group.
I hope they’re back in many more mysteries to come!!