First line: “That’s the place,” said Carmela Bertrand.
From the inside cover: Carmela, owner of Memory Mine scrapbooking shop, and her best friend, Ava Gruiex, owner of Juju Voodoo, have a big project ahead. Melody Mayfeldt is converting an old mansion in the Faubourg Marigny district into an unforgettable haunted house for those who flock to New Orleans for a creepy fix. She needs Carmela’s crafty touch to make the Medusa Manor come to life – and evoke the dead – in time for the upcoming horror convention, DiscordaCon.
But Melody takes her house haunting a little too seriously – especially when her flaming body comes crashing through a tower window to welcome Carmela and Ava to the job…
Someone wanted Carmela’s client dead – very dead. Carmela’s in some deep gumbo again and needs to crop out a killer from the throngs of people there for DiscordaCon and the big Galleries and Gourmets celebration. Then maybe it won’t be so hard living in the Big Easy…
My thoughts: This is the seventh book in Laura Child’s scrapbooking mysteries series. I really enjoy reading this series – it’s always good for a laugh as Carmela and Ava get themselves into some pretty interesting predicaments. This time around, they are given the opportunity to decorate a haunted house. Seems like a simple, straightforward project until they go to meet with the owner and find her flaming body being thrown from the upstairs window. As Carmela and Ava start investigating the death of their friend, they are confronted with a host of suspects and weird happenings. Visiting graveyards, being followed, designing the haunted house – it’s all in a days work and adds quite a bit of suspense to the storyline. And during all this, Carmela and Shamus finally seem to be close to nearing a settlement in their divorce, if they can keep Shamus’s sister Glory from butting in. As always there are plenty of scrapbooking tips and yummy southern recipes included in the book, some of which I can’t wait to try! A quick, suspenseful read, I am eager to see what kind of mischief Carmela will get herself into next.
(I borrowed this book from the library.)
