Friday, June 26, 2009

Design for Murder by Carolyn G. Hart


Copyright: 1988
Publisher: Bantam Books
Genre: Mystery, 2nd in the Death on Demand series
Pages: 217
Challenges: TBR challenge (alternate list), Cozy Mystery Challenge
New-to-me author? No
Author's website

Simple Description
Annie Laurence is asked to host the mystery night at the Chastain, SC house tours. She needs to come up with the mystery – basically the who, with what, where, and why. It sounds like incredible fun! However, and there is always a "however", one of the board members really doesn't want this to happen. Corinne Webster is a prominent member of Chastain, one of the wealthiest, and also a total, well, you know what word I want to use. It seems that nobody likes her. She is constantly doing things just to make people mad, or at least that's what it seems like. When Corinne is found dead on the opening night of the mystery night, Annie quickly becomes a suspect. The murder weapon also happened to be the very same murder weapon that Annie had set-up for the mystery nights. Since only one other person is suspected of being the killer, and he is also an outsider, Annie and her fiancĂ©, Max, decide to try and clear her name.

Why did I read this book?
I had read the first book in the series and remember liking it enough to read more in the series, it just took me awhile to actually do that.

What I liked most:
I liked Annie and Max. They work very well together and seem like a great couple. It was fun seeing how they responded to things. I also love that while there was a real murder investigation going on, there is also a fake one. Annie gives you clues on each character and information on the fake one, but not the answer. So if you wanted to you could probably try and solve that one too. She does reveal the murderer to the fake murder at the end.

Was there something I didn't like?
The book appears to pick up almost right where the other book ends. Which is rather confusing since I read the first one in 2006, almost 3 years ago. I know Max and Annie are arguing over something, but had no idea what until I got further along in the story. So that was rather annoying. The other thing is that Annie is always dropping names of mystery authors and characters. Well…while mysteries are my favorite genre I don't read the entire genre and most of the time I had no idea who she was talking about. Haha! I don't think this ruined the book for me, it just made me think either the character or the author was a bit stuck-up because they were always name dropping. Yet..at the same time, since Annie is a mystery bookstore owner – it would make sense that she is familiar with most of the authors and characters.

Do I recommend the book?
Even though there were some things in the book that annoyed me, I do plan to read more in the series and I do recommend this series to others. I think it's a fun cozy mystery.




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Happy Reading and thanks for stopping by……Kris

2 comments:

Beth F said...

I think the series is a lot of fun, I've read four or five of them.

Kaye said...

I just love Carolyn Hart. When Annie talks about other mystery writers, I usually end up writing down some of the names of the mentioned books since mysteries are really my first love especially cozies. I hope you do the cozy challenge again next year. That was a lot of fun.