Monday, June 6, 2022

A Body on the Beach

Title: A Body on the Beach
Author: Dee MacDonald
Published: April 28th 2022 by Bookouture
Format: Kindle, 273 pages
Genre: Amateur Sleuth
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Kate Palmer #5

First Sentence: It was one of those sweltering hot days without a breath of wind which was unusual, to say the least, in a Cornish field so close to the edge of the cliffs.

Blurb: It’s Tinworthy village’s summer fete: a brass band, cream teas, gentle gossip... and a body on the beach? The party’s just getting started for super sleuth Kate Palmer!

Kate Palmer thought spending the day at Tinworthy’s annual summer party would involve sea air, sunshine and Cornish cream cake – how very wrong she was! When Kate goes for a cliff-top walk she is shocked to spot the body of Sienna Stone – Cornwall’s biggest gossip – on the sandy beach below.

Rumours swirl around the close-knit community and all eyes are on Kate. Half the village saw her arguing with Sienna at the party earlier that day. It was the usual bickering between neighbours, but when Kate finds herself in the frame can she – and her new husband Woody Forrest – solve the puzzling death and clear her name?

There’s a long list of people who might have wanted to push Sienna – her long-suffering husband Irvin, her jealous younger sister Sally and Timmy Thomson, the man who idolised her, not to mention all the villagers who felt the sharp end of her tongue. Finding out the truth isn’t going to be easy…

Just as Kate thinks she’s getting closer to an answer, an unexpected afternoon visitor shares some curious information over tea and scones that sets her on an entirely different path. And soon she starts to wonder if she might be in real danger too. (GoodReads)

My Opinion: Though Dee MacDonald does an excellent job catching new readers up on the adventures of Kate Palmer, I would recommend that readers start at the beginning so they can get the complete picture of Tinworthy and its people.

This story is twisty with no clean-cut who-done-it. You will be right there with Kate as she adds all the suspects to her list and crosses them out only to add them back again. The narrative becomes a little redundant when Kate is winnowing down her suspicions, but things pick back up again when the humor finally showed-up at the wedding of Jodi and Marc.

In the end, you can’t say the suspect was unexpected, but it does add heartache that Kate didn’t expect.

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