A Garland of Bones by Carolyn Haines is the 22nd book in the “Sarah Booth Delaney” cozy mystery series, coming October 13, 2020.
Spunky southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney tackles a string of strange accidents while celebrating the holiday season.
Sarah Booth has traded in hosting this Christmas season for a road trip with her besties. Each little Delta town has a special Christmas activity, and Sarah Booth’s bff and detective partner, Tinkie, has arranged to rent a limo for the gang and drive to Columbus, MS, to stay in a B&B. Visions of Christmas shopping, parade floats, and romantic rendezvous are already dancing in their heads.
But Christmas cheer soon turns to Christmas fear when, at one event after another, people keep getting hurt. Christmas karaoke gets ugly when one singer’s microphone gives her an electric shock. A party during a historic home tour ends with a fall down the stairs for one of Columbus’s most disreputable “players.” And when the woman who hires Sarah Booth to find the villain behind the so-called accidents is nearly killed with an arrow during a holiday mumming, Sarah Booth knows something more sinister is at work.
The Christmas bells are ringing hauntingly in Columbus this year, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie―with a little help from hunky Sheriff Coleman Peters, of course―are determined to catch the wrong-doers and ensure they receive nothing but coal in their stockings.
Dru’s Musing:
Another great excursion with Sarah Booth and her friends had her traveling to Columbus, Mississippi for a vacation filled with shopping and holiday spirits. That is interrupted when nefarious misdeeds started happening around them and one of the locals ask the Delaney Detective Agency to search for the person behind it all. As expected with fine writing, the author does a magnificent job in staging this drama with a wickedly solid and tightly woven plot that kept me immersed in what was going on from beginning to an ending worthy of such talent. The narrative, the engaging dialogue, the setting, the local atmosphere and of course this endearing cast of characters all added to my enjoyment of this Christmas tale. This book oozes Southern charm and hospitality that you forget that murder and mayhem is afoot. A delightfully enticing whodunit that have me begging for more Sarah Booth adventures.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.