Killer in the Carriage House

May 1, 2019
A small Maryland town struggling for survival becomes a magnet for murder. When unemployed Kate Hamilton was asked by a former high school friend to come up with ideas to help save their hometown of Asheboro from extinction (Murder at the Mansion, 2018), she never thought she'd end up staying. The town's magnificent Barton mansion needs little work to become a tourist attraction, and a storm recently revealed that downtown Asheboro has lovely Victorian buildings hidden under modern excrescences. So Kate hopes to reinvent the town as a living history area, like a pint-sized Colonial Williamsburg. Since Asheboro's broke, Kate devises a plan to get all the merchants on board and come up with the money for restoration. She calls in archivist Carroll Peterson to root through the treasure trove of papers found in the Barton mansion in hope of finding things that could help her both historically and financially. Kate's boyfriend, Johns Hopkins professor Josh Wainwright, who serves as the mansion's caretaker while working on a project in his field of 19th-century industrialization, is more than willing to help. So is her landlord, attorney Ryan Walker, her old high school squeeze. Having received permission to use the town library, which is currently closed, to organize the paperwork once it's moved from the mansion, she and Carroll stop in to check out the space only to find a dead body partially buried under a fallen bookcase and piles of books. Because she's no more persuaded than the police that the death was an accident, Kate adds sleuthing to her list of things to do. She continues to talk to everyone she can find who has knowledge of Asheboro's past, when Barton's shovel factory was the biggest employer in the area. The key to both her plans and the murder are to be found among the secrets in the abandoned factory. The murder plays second fiddle to the exponentially more fascinating hunt for historical data that will reveal all the answers.

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May 20, 2019
In bestseller Connolly’s enjoyable if somewhat rambling sequel to 2018’s Murder at the Mansion, former hotel hospitality manager Kate Hamilton draws up a plan to transform the center of Asheboro, Md., her hometown, into a Victorian village. In particular, she wants to restore the Barton mansion, the home of wealthy Henry Barton, who started a shovel factory outside of town after the Civil War. Asheboro’s citizens accept her proposal, and she and her new beau, Johns Hopkins professor Josh Wainwright, begin surveying buildings. Meanwhile, Carroll, a library science student, starts sorting through documents in the Barton mansion that haven’t been read in more than a hundred years. Shortly before moving the documents to the local library, Kate and Carroll discover the body of a young man in the library. As the police work to identify the victim, Kate and Josh research the source of Barton’s wealth, but somebody is prepared to kill to prevent the exposure of old secrets. Realistic characters compensate for the relatively weak plot. Cozy fans will be curious to see what Kate gets up to next. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds.

June 1, 2019

Kate Hamilton's hometown of Asheboro, MD, is broke, and she has ideas about saving it from further decline. With the Barton Mansion the focus of the town, Kate envisions an authentic Victorian Village, if the townspeople and shop owners will cooperate. She hopes some documents might help them find financial support. Kate and friends moved them to the closed library, but she is disturbed when a young man asks to get into the building. The next morning, Kate and a researcher uncover that young man's body. On the surface, he appears to have broken into the library, but both women suspect murder. In the follow-up to Murder at the Mansion, death seems to be only a distraction, with the murder not occurring until a third of the way in and seemingly a minor event. The focus of this slow-paced cozy is the search for answers to the puzzle that was Henry Barton, owner of the town's shovel factory and the Barton Mansion. Kate comes across as absentminded, and she blurts out secrets to everyone. VERDICT The mystery might appeal to those interested in historical renovations of towns, but is mostly suggested only for fans of the author or the previous book.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019
Kate Hamilton is back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland, where she and local historian Josh Wainwright have an audacious plan to rejuvenate the struggling community: turn Asheboro into a Victorian village, with the late Henry Barton's mansion as the anchor. As they sort through Henry's papers looking for ideas to help with the Victorian re-creation, Josh realizes that Henry may have worked with Thomas Edison, and helped him with some of his famous inventions. Moving the papers to the town's now-closed library, Kate finds the body of a young man who had said he was in town doing genealogy. Concerned that some members of the community, including some employees of the local power company, may want to keep history buried and may be willing to resort to murder, Kate and Josh investigate while attempting to keep the documents about Henry's inventions safe until they can determine if his estate and the town are owed money. The layers of history and the obstacles encountered in the process of trying to save a small town provide a fascinating frame story for this smart mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)