Murder, She Wrote: Snowy with a Chance of Murder by Jessica Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
Snowy with a Chance of Murder is the 60th-installment of the beloved Murder, She Wrote Cozy Mystery series. This series is essentially the Godmother of all other Cozies.
As some of you I’m sure are aware, this is my favorite Cozy Mystery series. I never shut up about it. I’ve read, I believe 47 of them now, but my count could be off. I’ve stopped really keep track after 40.
This book is the 1st to be penned by Barbara Early, author of the Vintage Toyshop Mystery series, amongst other things.
In this installment, Jessica, preparing to depart on a luxurious Winter cruise ends up slipping on the ice on the morning of her departure and severely injuring herself, making travel impossible.
Now housebound, forced to use a wheelchair, Jessica finds herself staring out her windows like never before.
As luck would have it, she has plenty to look at by way of a curious new neighbor, a man named Rymer. He has, for unknown reasons, ended up, in the non-tourist season, renting the house directly across the street from Jessica.
As it turns out, Rymer is an artist whose medium happens to be snow and his sculptures are of the scandalous variety. If you happened to watch Hot Frosty on Netflix this Winter, you’ll be pretty close to imagining what I mean.
With the town a titter over all this risque art on display, it’s no surprise that under the cover of darkness, someone starts destroying Rymer’s sculptures.
For his part, Rymer never seems too concerned. He just starts over, builds something new. It’s Cabot Cove, mid-Winter, there’s certainly plenty of snow to go around.
The morning after the most recent blizzard, however, it’s more than a sculpture that’s found out in the snowy landscape. It’s Rymer’s half-buried body.
Incidentally, there are two other mysteries occurring at the same time as Rymer’s death. Are these other mysteries related to Rymer, and if so how?
You better believe Jessica is going to do her best to help local law enforcement figure it out. With the help of friends, and a healthy dose of determination, she does just that.
3.5-stars, you ask, for my favorite Cozy series? It is rounded up, but still I feel we need to lay it out on the table. Here’s the thing. This is the 1st-effort from this author in this long-running series, and while I did enjoy the main overall mystery, I was left with questions.
Also, I felt like Jessica’s character wasn’t quite right. It didn’t feel like her in some ways. It was subtle things, but still things that took me out of the story as I thought to myself, Jessica would never say that, or think that.
One thing I want when I pick up this series is consistency. These are go-to comfort reads for me that I’ve been picking up for over 2-decades. If Jessica suddenly starts not feeling like Jessica, you better believe I’m gonna notice.
Nevertheless, this was still overall a pretty solid read, and of course, I will continue picking up the books in this series.
I enjoy the Cabot Cove-based mysteries, because when you become a frequent Reader, you learn all the townsfolk and it really feels like spending time with old friends. I do think this author succeeded in bringing about the basic vibes of this quaint seaside town.
There was a lot happening here though, some of it felt a little unnecessary. For example, Jessica had a live-in nurse, helping her while she was injured, and they would have little writing workshops together and it included excerpts from this girl’s random Fantasy story.
It just felt to me like the author needed to fill pages and that was one way to do it. There was ultimately a point to it, but it still felt silly and forced.
With this being said, you aren’t going to love every book you read in a series, and I still felt all my love and nostalgia of being back with Jessica in Cabot Cove.
Thank you to the publisher, Berkley, for providing me with a copy to read and review. There’s another book releasing this Summer, set in Boston, and I’m so excited for that one!
If you love Cozy Mysteries, and haven’t checked this series out yet, you really should. They can be read in any order and once you start, you probably are not going to want to stop!
