Crafts and Life

Summer is busy season for Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida’s bicycle shop, nestled in the quaint, seaside hamlet of Westham, Massachusetts. She’s expecting an influx of tourists at Mac’s Bikes; instead she discovers the body of Jake Lacey. Mac can’t imagine anyone stabbing the down-on-his-luck handyman. However, the authorities seem to think Mac is a strong suspect after she was spotted arguing with Jake just hours before his death. Mac knows she didn’t do it, but she does recognize the weapon—her brother Derrick’s fishing knife.
 
Mac’s only experience with murder investigations is limited to the cozy mysteries she reads with her local book group, the Cozy Capers. So to clear her name—and maybe her brother’s too—Mac will have to summon help from her Cozy Capers co-investigators and a library’s worth of detectives’ tips and tricks. For a small town, Westham is teeming with possible killers, and this is one mystery where Mac is hoping for anything but a surprise ending…

This looks like a good start to a new series from Maddie Day, in this one we have a book club that only reads cozy mysteries (to the disgust of the manager of the local book shop, who is also the daughter on one of the Cozy Capers!), we start with the book club meeting at our protagonist's brother's house (err actually a disused lighthouse), we know there are 10 Cozy Capers but we don't find out a lot about them – other than Mackensie aka Mac (I am guessing that each book will provide a little more information), after the discussion and homemade pizza Mac heads home only to trip over a corpse! Now the Cozy Capers are trying to figure out what happened to the down on his luck handyman Jake, whilst trying to run their businesses (Mac has problems with her brother not turning up for a few days post the corpse AND her other employee phoning in sick), whilst they are trying to not emulate the amateur sleuth's they read about on a weekly basis they are determined that Derrick (Mac's brother) will not be railroaded and also Mac hopes that she will keep running her bicycle rental and repair shop and won't be pedalling her way to the Pearly Gates.