Cozy Monday

Better Homes and Corpses (Hamptons Home & Garden Mystery #1) by Kathleen Bridge (Berkley Prime Crime mass market paperback, 4 August 2015).

Meg Barrett breaks up with her fiancé when she finds out he's still seeing his ex-wife.  She leaves Manhattan,and her job as a magazine writer, and moves to Montauk to  start her own interior design business.

When Meg goes to visit her college roommate Jillian Spenser, whose family is considered Hamptons royalty, she is stunned to find an injured Jillian sitting next to her mother's blood-covered body.  Having been the one to discover Jillian and her mother, Meg is unwillingly drawn into the investigation.  

Meg's friend Elle, who works for the insurance company, hires her to help with the inventory of the estate, so Meg is forced to spend time there and get to know the rest of the family and assorted hangers-on.  She learns more than she wants to about the Spensers and their secrets and becomes drawn into family dramas.

Meg is a gutsy and resourceful character, and being the daughter of a police officer doesn't hurt.  Her parentage also adds to her determination to figure out what happened.  

The basis of the story is unusual and intriguing, and Kathleen Bridge constructs the story well. I look forward to reading the further adventures of Meg Barrett!



The publisher has generously offered a copy of Better Homes and Corpses to one of my readers in the United States.  Please comment below before midnight on August 24, 2015, and don't forget to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.

FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book.