Murder Outside the Lines
Book Summary
With Halloween just around the corner, the fall colors in Georgetown are brilliant. As manager of the Color Me Read bookstore, coloring book creator Florrie Fox has arranged for psychic author Hilda Rattenhorst to read from Spooktacular Ghost Stories. But the celebrity medium arrives for the event in hysterics, insisting she just saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet in a nearby alley. Is someone trying to sweep murder under the rug? Florrie calls in her policeman beau, Sergeant Eric Jonquille, but the carpet corpse has disappeared without a trace. Then in the middle of her reading, Hilda chillingly declares that she feels the killer's presence in the store. Is this a publicity stunt or a genuine psychic episode? It seems there's no happy medium. When a local bibliophile is soon discovered missing, a strange mystery begins to unroll. Now it's up to Florrie and Jonquille to expose a killer's true colors . . .
My Thoughts
Murder Outside the Lines by Krista Davis is the 3rd A Pen & Ink Mystery. It can be read as a standalone for those new
to the series. Fans of the series will
be happy to finally get this new installment (we have been waiting so long). There is a great cast of characters in this
engaging series. I like the variety of
quirky characters with the majority of them being book lovers. Florrie Fox will need to keep her wits about
her if she is to solve the latest whodunit.
The book starts with the arrival of a skull and then we have the psychic
who believes she saw a foot sticking out of rolled up carpet. When Florrie and her beau, Sergeant Eric
Jonquille arrive at the location, they find nary a thing. On her way back to the bookstore, Florrie
overhears a disturbance inside a home.
When she finally gets inside, she finds one of the store’s customers
bleeding out on the floor. This is just
the beginning. There are plenty of
incidents to keep this book hopping. This
was a fun whodunit to solve. It was
complex with plenty of twists, surprises, whirls, and turns. The reveal was complete
and answered all of my lingering questions.
is well-written with developed characters. I love that Florrie is not only the manager
of a bookstore but that she designs adult coloring books. There are several different elements
happening in the beginning of the book. It had me feeling like I was in the
middle of something. I just needed to be
patient. It all comes together with a
great reveal. There were a few too many
conversations for my liking on whether ghosts were real. It began to feel repetitious. I like that the author gave us a list of
characters at the beginning so readers can reacquaint themselves with the cast
(it has been some time since the last book).
I enjoyed the authors descriptions of the Georgetown neighborhood, Florrie’s
cozy cottage, and the bookstore. The
author was able to strike a balance between too much and not enough. I like the spooky Halloween atmosphere in the
story with my favorite being the skull that did not stay in one place. There
are tasty recipes at the end. I look
forward to Florrie’s next adventure in A Colorful Scheme.
Murder Outside the Lines is an eerie cozy
mystery with a screaming skull, a prophetic psychic, a disappeared rug, ghost quarrels,
tasty treats, and Halloween hijinks.
Kris
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