April 11, 2022
Hilliard’s enjoyable if sometimes sluggish sequel to 2021’s The Unkindness of Ravens takes widowed librarian Greer Hogan to the Adirondacks for the third wedding of her “brilliant, beautiful, and stinking rich” friend, Sarah Whitaker. Greer has her own agenda, to determine whether any of the wedding guests, many of whom are staying at the Whitaker family’s large summer house, know anything about her husband Danny’s murder three years earlier. Greer is surprised by the tension she senses in several of the guests, and when a body turns up, she investigates. Repetition slows the action, as when Greer finds something that may be relevant, then recaps her discovery, sometimes more than once, and it can be difficult to keep all the undeveloped minor characters straight. This works well as a contemporary take on the traditional country house mystery, though, as shown by using cellphones to establish timing and verification of motive, and the author’s flair for physical description is a plus. No matter that Greer makes little progress solving Danny’s murder. Readers will look forward to further developments on the solution to that crime in future books. Agent: Julie Gwinn, Seymour Agency.