Elizabeth Bright Invitation to Murder

Invitation to Murder

Elizabeth Bright

Signet, Sep 2005, $6.99, 240 pp.

ISBN: 0451216342

In the resort town of Rebel Forge, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Jennifer Shane opens up Custom Card Creations after failing to persuade her older sister Sara Lynn to expand her shop Forever Memories. While waiting for her first customer, she receives a strange phone call asking for Annie followed by a scream of terror and silence. When her brother Sheriff Bradford arrives to make peace between his sisters, Jennifer tells him about the strange phone call. Not long afterward she gets another call, but silence greets her on the other end.

When she goes home, another odd call occurs. The next day she receives an envelop with only her first name written on the outside with no postage or other marks; inside is a letter in which someone tells her to forget what she heard or she will be next. She shows the note to Bradford who leaves her to investigate the death of a young woman. Trying to start a business, Jennifer has inadvertently been yanked into a homicide all because of a wrong number.

INVITATION TO MURDER is a wonderful police procedural-amateur sleuth investigative tale. The storyline combines family rivalry and nurturing inside an intriguing who-done-it as an innocent Jennifer is unwillingly yanked into the middle of a homicide investigation. The three siblings make the mystery work as they seem like real siblings loving and arguing with one another even as Bradford works the case while Jennifer tries to keep out but fate pushes her back into the center. This is a bright cozy that fans will welcome.

Harriet Klausner