going around and around with a killer

Shannon Hammer isn’t slowing down for Christmas. As the head of her own contracting business, she is willing to take on assignments close to the holidays, especially when it’s for such a good cause. The Garrison family have run a local Cliffs Hotel for many, many years. It’s where the residents of Lighthouse Cove as well as tourists come to celebrate good food, good friends, and the Christmas spirit. Last year, the Garrisons installed a train for the holiday season. This year, they’re installing an antique carousel, and they’ve asked Shannon and her crew to create a Victorian-style midway that features booths for games and snacks to go along with it.

Most of the Garrison kids and their spouses worked at the hotel. Logan was the oldest, who was in the military, but his wife Randi worked in the restaurant and was taking courses to become a sommelier. Arabella was the middle child and in charge of the hotel’s day spa, and she was married to Franco, the chef. The youngest Garrison was Stephanie, manager of the hotel, and she was married to Craig, who was the manager of the hotel’s bar. Shannon wanted to like them all, but Randi and Arabella were good friends with the woman who had stolen her high school boyfriend and still acted like she and her friends were high school mean girls.

But she could try to stay out of their way, for the most part, as she was working on the midway booths. However, it will be more difficult when they start on the hotel’s next project, where each couple gets to redesign a part of the hotel, and Shannon and her team will complete the redesign according to their ideas. The Garrison parents were trying to get their kids more invested in the hotel, and they added an extra incentive of a cash prize to the favorite redesign.

But when Shannon stumbles on the dead body of Randi in the hotel basement, the holiday celebrations are put on hold for the investigation. And when Shannon realizes that the murderer borrowed her pink-handled drywall knife as the murder weapon, she has extra motivation to wrap up the killer before Santa comes.

The Knife Before Christmas is book 11 in Kate Carlisle’s Fixer-Upper Mysteries that focus on the restoration of Victorian houses and businesses in California. Contractor Shannon Hammer solves mysteries that show up on or near her projects along with the help of her team, her fiancé Mac, her sister Chloe, and the local sheriff. She is known for quality work and her pink tools, as well as her knack for finding killers.

I really liked the Christmas theme for this mystery, which is good, because the holiday theme started right away but the mystery didn’t get started until the story was well underway. There were a lot of things happening in the book before the murder, but it was a fun story with lots of Christmas spirit. I read these books as much for the restoration and construction work (HGTV fan) as for the murder mysteries, so I didn’t mind the late entrance of the victim, but I think it was almost 50% of the way in. So that’s something to keep in mind if you’re someone who likes your cozy mysteries with a crime right away. But I like these characters, I was ready for some holiday cheer, and I had a great time with The Knife Before Christmas, even though I didn’t actually get to play Bonk the Christmas Bunny.

Egalleys for The Knife Before Christmas were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.