The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder by Mary Jane Maffini is the fifth book in the “Charlotte Adams” mystery series. Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime (Penguin), April 2011
Mona Pringle, the local 911 operator, is calling Charlotte Adams for a change. She’s having her own emergency: Serena Redding, one of the” mean girls” in high school who used to torment Mona, is coming back for a reunion. When Mona talks about how good it would feel to kill Serena, Charlotte doesn’t believe she means it. But then a woman who looks like Serena is killed in a hit-and-run—and no one knows where Mona is. After another former mean girl is also run down, Charlotte realizes she needs to look both ways for the missing Mona—before a murderer strikes again.
Charlotte gets a frantic call from her friend Mona, making bold statements of a threatening nature. When the recipient of that threat is thought to have been murdered, Mona goes into hiding fearing that she is responsible. Charlotte tries to help prove that Mona had nothing to do with the fatalities happening in their town, but she gets in over her head and soon her life is in peril. This fast-paced, action-packed story grabbed my attention as I was rooting for Charlotte to get to the bottom of who was really behind these incidents. This was a great book and I look forward to reading the next book in this enjoyable series filled with valuable organizing tips.
FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent me a copy of this book