STILL AS DEATH (A Lucky Whiskey Mystery #2) by J.A. Kazimer was published on August 25th, 2020 by Midnight Ink.
Charlotte Lucky is throwing a surprise birthday party for her grandfather, but she is the one who receives the real surprise when her ex-boyfriend, semi-famous actor Marcus Savage, makes an unexpected appearance. As if that’s not shocking enough, in the middle of Marcus proposing to her, the town’s banker drops over dead and faceplants into the cake. Finding herself accidently engaged, Charlotte is trying to figure out a way out of her predicament when someone does it for her. Unfortunately for Charlotte, she becomes the local sheriff’s number one suspect in Marcus’s murder. Determined to prove her innocence and find the real killer—as well as save her grandfather’s distillery—Charlotte teams up with her frenemy and rival whiskey-maker Brodie Gett for another round of amateur sleuthing.
STILL AS DEATH is the second novel in the Lucky Whiskey Mystery series. It picks up a few months after A SHOT OF MURDER and continues with some of the storylines that were developed in the first novel. The Lucky Whiskey distillery is still struggling, Brodie Gett is still annoying, and the townspeople are still mad at Charlotte for something that happened ten years prior. While an interesting concept, the story kind of fell flat. The suspect pool was exceedingly small—there were only three or four viable suspects since the victim was not from the area and no one (aside from Charlotte, her grandfather, and her cousin) had ever met him before. The killers were secondary characters that were never considered suspects throughout the investigation. Their involvement and motive came out of nowhere. As in the first novel, Charlotte’s main suspects are her cousin, the town’s local drug dealer, and Brodie Gett. Yes, the same Brodie who is helping her investigate. As in the first novel, Charlotte comes off as very immature and a bit of an airhead. She’s likeable, but only to a point. And her constant back and forth bickering with Brodie—not to mention her feelings for him—got a bit tedious after a while.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC,