‘ When irrepressible accountant Cleopatra Jones overshoots the sixth green, her golf ball lands in the biggest hazard of her life, the inseam of a dead banker. Murder rocks this small Maryland town and old secrets cast suspicion on Cleo’s best friend.
Cleo sets out to prove her friend is innocent. Her sleuthing is hampered by her damaged instincts, a jumbo dog, and her wacky, engaging family. As head of the household, Cleo will do anything to protect her children.’
Blurb from the 2012 Muddle House Publishing Kindle edition
The unexpectedly named Cleopatra Jones is having a nice round of golf with her best friend Jonette and. not being what might be termed an expert golfer, knocks her ball into a thicket. Unfortunately, she finds her ball to have landed on the corpse of her ex-husband’s best friend, ‘Dudley’.
Cleo is a divorced mother of two who runs her late father’s accountancy business. When her friends and family end up as suspects for the murder she decides to look into things herself while dealing with her ex-husband, her domining mother, a pair of amorous St Bernards and her sexual tension in the presence of the handsome golf coach. Given that the book shows Cleo emerging as her own woman, having divorced a philandering husband, the scenes in which Cleo falls apart at Rafe’s very touch rather subverts the message, but then maybe that’s the point.
It’s a very pleasant and entertaining read which at least mentions, if not features, gay characters in a refreshingly matter of fact way. There don’t appear to be any non-white people in Hogan’s Glen, but that seems to be a common feature of many of these US cosey mysteries.
However, with the exception of Rafe, the impossibly perfect golf coach, the characters are very well realised.
There’s a decent plot in which Cleo is able to exploit her job and accountancy skills in her investigations. Toussaint also does a good job of providing a large number of people with motive, if not opportunity, for wanting ‘Dudley Do-Right’ dead.
The denouement is perhaps my only gripe since I am sure that the author could have come up with a better climax which is a little cliched, if I am honest.
Good read though. I will be checking out the next one.
Bodies In The Library 