GETAWAY WITH MURDER (Mountain Lodge Mystery #1) by Diane Kelly will be published on October 26th 2021 by St. Martin's Press.
Fifty-years old and recently divorced, Misty Murphy is ready to begin the next chapter of her life as the proprietor of a lodge located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. After getting the rundown lodge patched up, Misty hosts her first round of guests. A yoga studio from Charlotte has booked the lodge for a weeklong retreat. The peaceful stay goes awry when the main yoga instructor's body is found underneath the newly installed deck. The sheriff's department is in charge of the investigation, but that doesn't stop Misty from looking into things. After all, her new lodge's reputation is at stack and she may also be playing host to a killer.
I kept going back and forth on how I felt about GETAWAY WITH MURDER. I loved the setting, the lodge will provide a fresh set of guests, victims, and suspects with each novel. It shows promise as a series. I also appreciated that Misty worked with the local law enforcement while she did her own snooping. She shared everything she discovered, and she kept the sheriff in the loop opposed to hoarding the info to herself. But I was not really a fan of any of the main characters, and I found parts of the plot very improbable. Also, the chapters from Misty's cat's perspective were just silly. While cute, those chapters added nothing to the story and could have been left out.
It took a while to get to the actual murder—understandable since Misty had to establish herself at the lodge, prepare it for opening, bring in the first round of guests, and set the scene for the murder. Following the murder, there was a lot of repetition as Misty went over and over her short list of suspects and what she thought their motives might be. Some of the motives were flimsy—a NASCAR drive once shoved a competitor following a race and, in Misty's opinion, that somehow that makes him capable of murder...
The identity of the killer did come as a surprise. I really didn't suspect the character, but, because I had checked out some reviews ahead of time, I was aware the killer was someone completely unexpected. So, in a way, maybe I did suspect the killer... What was even more surprising was the murderer's lackluster motive for committing the crime. The real mystery for me was how the killer got into the victim's locked hotel room without a key. It was unexpected, but it also made Misty and her handyman extraordinaire look a little incompetent since they never noticed it while preparing the lodge for guests.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.