A SHOT OF MURDER (A Lucky Whiskey Mystery #1) by J.A. Kazimer was published on June 8th, 2019 by Midnight Ink.
After spending ten years trying to make it in Hollywood, Charlotte Lucky is back in the small town of Gett, Florida to help take care of her grandfather and run the family’s whiskey business. Things are not exactly going well—making whiskey is hard work, and Charlotte also must deal with a rival whiskey-making family and the lingering resentment of the townspeople over an old high school prank. And it only gets worse when Charlotte finds the body of Lucky Whiskey’s main distiller—and her ex-boyfriend—stuffed in a barrel of whiskey. When the local law enforcement centers their investigation on her grandfather, Charlotte is forced to team up with her whiskey-making rival to find the real killer and prove that Jack is innocent.
A SHOT OF MURDER is the first novel in the cozy mystery series by J.A. Kazimer. The story has a good plot, and Charlotte has a legitimate reason for getting involved in an amateur investigation. The local law enforcement have basically decided that her grandfather is guilty and are not pursuing any other suspects. There is a lot of back and forth between Charlottes and her rival Brodie Gett—she cannot decide if she can trust him or not. Nor can she decide if he should be one of her main suspects. Their back and forth, hot and cold “relationship” got a bit tedious at times. It felt like every other page Charlotte was had to question Brodie or herself for putting up with Brodie. She constantly believes the worst of him and there are countless misunderstandings between them that cause unnecessary drama. Charlotte is supposed to be in her late 20s, but her maturity level seems to be stuck in her late teens—as does the maturity level of some of the locals that Charlotte encounters. She constantly compares Gett to Hollywood, causing her to find the hometown lacking as she portrays it as a clichéd small southern town.
Overall, A SHOT OF MURDER was an interesting story and the mystery plot kept me guessing until the end. The resistiveness of certain aspects, as well as Charlotte’s immature attitude, kept me from fully getting into the novel. Because I like the concept, I will give the second novel in the series a try.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of A SHOT OF MURDER.