a mystery wrapped in a puzzle covered in enigma sauce

Maddie Brimley moved back to Enigma, Georgia, where she grew up, but not because she wanted to. Her Aunt Rose died and left Maddie her house and the bookstore that she ran out of it. Maddie had been living in Atlanta, doing some acting, when she got called back to Enigma. Rose had been an actor too, on Broadway, before she had moved back to Enigma and opened The Old Juniper Bookstore, and eventually, raised Maddie after her parents were gone.

But things do not go smoothly for Maddie. On her first night in Rose’s house, she looks out back and sees a fire in the gazebo. She calls the fire department and runs outside herself to try to put the fire out. Maddie and the firemen are able to put out the fire and keep the damage just to the gazebo, but the fire had been no accident. Maddie is informed that there was gasoline poured onto the wood to make it burn faster. The fire chief asks Maddie if she had been the one to set the fire, but she adamantly denies having anything to do with it.

The next day, Maddie is welcomed to town by her aunt’s best friend Phil, Dr. Philomena Waldrop, the head of the psychology department at the local college. Phil doesn’t know who had been taking care of Rose’s cat Cannonball in her absence, but she does help Maddie get situated with the bookstore. And Maddie’s opening the bookstore just in time, since Rose had helped supply the textbooks for the college. And whether it’s for the books or the gossip, students have started showing up at the bookstore.

One student is Tandy Fletcher, who introduces herself to Maddie and explains that she had been helping Rose with the bookstore. Maddie leaves her to ring up the students’ purchases while she steps aside with police officer Billy Sanders, who Maddie had babysat back when she had been in school. Now he’s grown and ready to investigate the fire in Maddie’s gazebo. But the investigation doesn’t really catch fire until after another night.

Maddie, not wanting to spend another night alone in the house, decides to let Tandy stay over. And in the middle of the night, Maddie wakes up to a fire in the kitchen. She calls the fire department and goes looking for Tandy, so they can get out of the house. But Tandy can’t come with her. Tandy was killed.

Maddie is distraught that the young woman had been killed while she had slept upstairs, and she wanted to find out what had happened. Tandy had seemed like a sweet kid, so Maddie can’t figure out who would want to kill her. But then, was it Maddie who had actually been the target? As she tries to figure out what was happening around her in Enigma, Maddie finds that no one is really who they seem. Who can Maddie trust? And just how much danger is she in?

Booked for Murder is a mystery steeped in Southern culture and peppered with smart literary allusions. There is a gardener who had worked with Wendell Barry and a kitchen table that had belonged to Flannery O’Connor. There are many jazz albums and quotes from Shakespeare. There is a lot going on in this book, from the quirky characters to the complex mystery, but it’s smart and intriguing and keeps readers curious until the end.

I enjoyed Booked for Murder, but I do think this should have come with a trigger warning. I realized it was set in the South, but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how hungry it was going to make me. There was fried chicken, biscuits, barbecue, and sweet potato pie. I spend way too much time thinking about what I was going to have for dinner based on the food descriptions in this book. It’s a fun read, but be prepared with snacks, and by snacks I mean cast-iron fried chicken with all the fixings and a couple of bags filled with the best barbecue you can find.

Egalleys for Booked for murder were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.