Laughing Can Kill You

Maggie King’s astute cozy-mystery protagonist Hazel Rose of Richmond, Virginia, is thrust front and center in a murder investigation that puts her own life in jeopardy. 

Hazel Rose is a computer-programmer-turned-romance writer who burst onto the cozy literary murder-mystery scene in Murder at the Book Group. In that novel, Book One, she was swept up in solving the murder of a book club member who died after ingesting a cup of tea laced with cyanide. In Book Two, Murder at the Moonshine Inn, Hazel and her book club cronies became embroiled in solving the suspicious death of a high-powered executive found dead in the parking lot of a local watering hole. In Laughing Can Kill You, Book Three in this engaging series, poor Hazel learns that she’s been dumped by her publisher—her romance books have faced lagging sales. Ever resilient and undaunted Hazel decides to sign up for a local course in mystery writing in the hope that by switching gears, she’ll re-energize her career. The problem is, however, there is always one spoiler in every group—and writing groups are no exception.

Self-aggrandizing Randall “Randy” Zimmerman, Esquire—a lawyer-turned-thriller-writer who believes he can give “John Grisham a run for his money”--is that one annoying person in Hazel’s group. Randy is the ex-husband of a book club member. He takes confrontational pleasure in demeaning, belittling and even laughing at the work of his fellow classmates. When Hazel and her true-crime writing husband, Vince, find Randy dead, foul-play looms. Hazel--with the help of her cohorts--once again goes on a dangerous pursuit to root out the killer.  

Readers don’t need to be familiar with King’s prior books to enjoy this one, but they’ll no doubt want to after reading this well-crafted, suspenseful whodunnit augmented with a strong supporting, small-town ensemble cast and a ratcheting plot rife with shifty motives and red herrings.

Laughing Can Kill You: A Hazel Rose Book Group Mystery (Book Three) by Maggie King

Olive Lane Press, $12.99 paperback, 9798985231816, 320 pages

Publication Date: December 6, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Read my reviews of other Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries:

MURDER AT THE BOOK GROUP

MURDER AT THE MOONSHINE INN

Murder at the Moonshine Inn

When Murder at the Moonshine Inn opens, readers learn that it's been eight years since Hazel Rose--a computer programmer turned romance novelist and super-sleuth--solved the murder of a disgruntled Richmond, Va. book club member who died after sipping cyanide-laced tea at a book club discussion.

In this second installment, Hazel goes undercover to find out who killed Roxanne Howard, a willful and high-powered executive, in the parking lot of a local redneck watering hole. Roxanne's grief-stricken sister enlists Hazel's help to find the killer as Roxanne's husband, Brad, is actually Hazel's distant cousin—and he also becomes the prime suspect in his wife's murder.

As Hazel gets drawn deeper into the mystery--and enlists the help of her shrewd, clever, mystery-loving book club cohorts--more complications ensue that involve Hazel's distant relatives and a long list of possible suspects ranging from Roxanne's rivals to former employees.

Hazel's fifth husband, a retired Richmond homicide detective who is a writer of true crime books, offers Hazel pertinent information into the investigation that aids her quest to flush out the murderer. What was the motive—love or money...or maybe revenge? When a second murder occurs, red herrings thwart Hazel's investigation until her own safety comes at risk. 

King (Murder at the Book Group) delivers another well-written, suspenseful cozy filled with a charming, quirky cast of book-loving characters and a plot that tightens before it ultimately unspools into a surprising conclusion.

Murder at the Moonshine Inn: A Hazel Rose Book Club Mystery by Maggie King

KoehlerBooks, $16.95 Paperback, 9781633932814, 260 pages

Publication Date: November 15, 2016

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, click HERE

Murder at the Book Group

Maggie King entertainingly darkens the common perception of book clubs (a benign assembly of readers who've come together to discuss books) in her quirky debut, Murder at the Book Group. The story begins when normally even-keeled, vain Carlene Arness hurls the cozy mystery under discussion into a fireplace. "This book sucks," she exclaims. "There should be a law protecting the reading public from such trash!" The shocked members try to placate irate Carlene, who is also a mystery novelist, then rationally discuss and analyze the plot, which has to do with cyanide slipped into the teacup of an unsuspecting victim.

When the group breaks for refreshments, Carlene suddenly drops dead. Remarkably, her death is deemed the result of cyanide poisoning. When a note is discovered, Carlene's death appears to be a suicide. Many in the group, however, suspect someone killed her and forged the note--or is this kind of thinking the result of having read too many mystery novels? The quest for both who done it and why unearths a host of insidious rivalries and romantic entanglements.

The narrator, Hazel Rose, is a computer programmer turned aspiring romance novelist who cofounded the book club with Carlene. Carlene's death gives Hazel's banal existence a much-needed jolt, but her search for a would-be killer is riddled with snags when Carlene's friends, family and acquaintances offer compelling details of Carlene's multiple identities, surprising secrets and sordid love affairs. The amateur sleuth's pseudo-investigative skills and her interactions with a cast of well-drawn, small-town characters reveal a deception that ultimately coalesces into a study of human nature and the limits of perception.

Murder at the Book Group by Maggie King

Pocket, $7.99 Mass Market Paperback, 9781476762463, 400 pp

Publication Date: December 30, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (1/6/15), click HERE

This review was also featured (in a longer form) on Shelf Awareness: Book Trade (12/18/14). To read the longer review click HERE

Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger

Love and its many contemporary complications have become the hallmarks of Beth Harbison's cleverly titled novels. In Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger, a single woman is forced to come to terms with two brothers who broke her heart ten years before. Harbison sets up a love triangle that's sure to please fans of entertaining, light-hearted women's fiction.

In this story, small town girl Quinn Barton had every intention of marrying her high school sweetheart, Burke Morrison. Moments before she is to walk down the aisle, however, her brother-in-law Frank pulls the twenty-one year-old bride aside and announces that Burke, his brother, has been cheating on her. Quinn, appalled, calls off the wedding and has a short-lived rebound relationship with Frank that ultimately fizzles. For the next ten years, with the boys having departed their Middleburg, Virginia hometown, Quinn stays behind, married to her job running a local bridal shop.

When Burke and Frank's eccentric, 82 year-old grandmother decides to marry again, she hires Quinn to make her wedding gown. Might this be a scheme to lure the boys back to town? When they arrive for the ceremony, and to tie up loose ends on the family farm, Quinn realizes the story of the Morrison brothers and the depth of her feelings for them, are not really over - and vice-versa.

Harbison (When in Doubt, Add Butter) has once again created an endearing, humorous story with laugh out loud twist and turns. The interior intimacy of her witty, first person point of view protagonist leads readers on a well-balanced, romantic journey from true love to heartbreak - and back again.

Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger by Beth Harbison

St. Martin's Press, $25.99, hardcover, 9780312599133 , 384 pp

Publication Date: July 9, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/9/13), click HERE