Tuesday, April 7, 2015

See Also Murder: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery by Larry D. Sweazy

Marjorie's life has changed.  She's a farm wife living on the homestead her family owned and an unfortunate accident has rendered her husband into a disabled shell of a person.  She refuses to give up on him, but to keep the farm and food coming to the table, she has to get another job.  She picks indexing because reading and learning have always been part of her life.  Some people think of her as smart.  That becomes a problem for her in this story...

Seventh Street Books and Edelweiss gave me the opportunity to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published May 5th.

I've read Mr. Sweazy's westerns and really enjoyed them.  When he told me he was writing a mystery, I began watching for it.  This is not a cozy mystery.  It's a very intense story that made me feel sorry for the main character.  

Life was hard for Marjorie and it got even harder when her neighbor's throats are cut while they are sleeping at night.  The two young men were unhurt, but if she lost their help on the farm due to their grief, she was going to have to look for someone else to help.  And how could she sleep at night when she knew how her neighbors died?

When the sheriff brings her a strange amulet and asks her to figure out what it means as it was in her neighbor's hand at his time of death, she agrees to.  Mostly because of curiosity and because he said she smart and could help.  As soon as she tries to begin identifying it, more trouble comes.  She asks the sheriff's wife to care for her husband so she can check with the library and her cousin for info on the amulet.  When she gets home, she finds the sheriff's wife out by the barn, her throat cut, with a piece of mistletoe in her hand.  Hank is fine but he only knows what he's heard which is nothing unusual.

She's certain the amulet is what is causing all trouble.  Mythology seems to be involved.  And, who in their little city is a murderer?  It has to be someone she knows...

While you're traveling along with Marjorie and hoping she figures it out before she becomes the next victim, you're also learning about indexing.  That's Marjorie's new job and it's more difficult than I would have thought.  No wonder she gets confused when she's trying to figure out a murder case.  Trying to index that is a nightmare.  So are the murders.

This was interesting read.  I'm not quite sure where this series is going but I'd read another to see how everyone recovers after this case.  I bet when I do, I'll be hooked on another series by Mr. Sweazy. 

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