Friday, July 29, 2022

Beginning ~ with hampers of food


Beginning

"I hope we have enough to eat," Hugh said anxiously from the driver's seat of his car.

Bessie laughed from the passenger seat.  "I'm sure we have plenty," she assured the young policeman.  "Doona, Grace, and I all brought hampers of food.  We have enough for a small army."

"Or one Hugh Watterson," Grace laughed from the backseat.

Aunt Bessie Decides ~ by Diana Xarissa, 2014, cozy mystery, 238 pages

Aunt Bessie decides that she and her closest friends should have an enjoyable night out.  Elizabeth Cubbon (known to almost everyone as Aunt Bessie) has made many friends over the lifetime that she’s lived in the village of Laxey, but few have been as close as the ones she’s made recently.  Bessie relied on Doona Moore, Hugh Watterson, and John Rockwell to help her through several recent murder investigations she’s found herself caught up in.  Now she wants to treat them all to an open-air performance of a Shakespearean play on the grounds of historic Peel Castle.

Aunt Bessie decides that it doesn’t much matter what show the troupe is performing as long as she and her friends can relax and have fun.  Two members have recently left the theatre company.  Now the troupe has thrown aside its usual repertoire in favor of a play written by one of their own.  When those two former members appear in the audience, though, someone decides to get rid of one of them for good.  Aunt Bessie decides to give the show another chance, but a second performance almost ends in a second tragedy.  With all of the suspects blaming one another, and several of them turning up on the doorstep of Bessie’s cottage, it’s time for Bessie to decide to solve this murder herself.

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