Tragic Magic
Laura Childs
Berkley, Oct 6 2009, $24.95
ISBN: 9780425229897
After three long years wrangling over a divorce, Carmela Bertrand and Seamus are near a settlement if his sister Gloria minds her business. In the meantime, four years since Katrina, Carmela, owner of Memory Mine scrapbook shop, is finally finding her customers coming back and making money. Her friend, Melody Mayfeldt is up against a deadline to convert an old mansion Medusa Manor into a haunted house that will attract customers from all over the country. When Carmela and her friend Ava Gruiex, owner of Juju Voodoo, are near Medusa Manor, they hear a loud explosion and see a fiery body flying through a window.
The victim is Melody; a shaken Carmela and Ava are accosted by Melody’s silent partner Olivia Wainwright who pleads with them to get the haunted house ready in time for the horror convection DiscordaCon. Carmela’s significant other Detective Edgar Babcock tells her that Melody’s husband Garth, owner of the Fire and Ice high end jewelry store, is the prime suspect; as the shop is bankrupt and he recently took out insurance on his late wife. Carmela and the cops have other suspects, but as each investigates separately increasingly Garth looks guilty.
New Orleans is still trying to return to normal as the Big Easy, but there is plenty left to do. Although fans will have to accept Carmela’s need to sleuth, as part of her being a strong independent person who refuses to let neither Seamus nor Edgar bully her; ironically their motives on the altruism scale are wide apart. Fast-paced with plenty of action, TRAGIC MAGIC is terrific scrapbooking amateur sleuth mystery in which the audience will enjoy stomping through the mud while trying to determine who killed Melody before the heroine can.
Harriet Klausner
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