Four Leaf Felony

Series: Holiday Cozy Mystery, Book 1

By: Tonya Kappes / Narrated By: Elizabeth Demetrios

Length: 5 hrs

Sweet, but Suspend Disbelief (LIKE CRAZY!) all ye who enter here…!

Okay, before I get into the story… I MUST address the narration and recording and editing… and by editing? I mean near total lack thereof. While Elizabeth Demetrios does a sorta serviceable job, she does NOT employ the Punch -n- Roll technique where a narrator pauses narration, doubles back, re-records the flub. Apparently nobody went back to these snafus during production before releasing Four Leaf Felony. This makes for jarring Listening as Demetrios says a line, flubs the tone, accent, word, or even just tries out a new way of saying the line. REPEATED LINES OUT THE WAZOO, and that’s never really good, ya know? Highly unprofessional. Also? I’m noooot sure about the accent she does for our heroine, Violet Rhinehammer who’s supposed to be Southern Belle-ish, hailing from small town Normal, Kentucky. Throw in egregious male voices, a ridiculous Villain Voice at the denouement, and dude! YIKES, ya know? Still, she tries hard, and can’t fault a person for trying to give it her all. It’s just that her All wound up being pretty Mediocre.

So this audiobook had a Ding from the get-go.

Now the part of Suspended Disbelief: This is part and parcel of a Cozy Mystery as, if one thinks about it for, like, even a smidgen of time, the body counts in Cozies are ridiculously high, and they’re s’posed to be deaths that leave minimal grief but plenty of clues and red herrings. Let’s get to the opening with the case our heroine Violet is thrust into.

Whilst flying to California for her Dream Job Interview, investigative journalist Violet just happens to be the person who discovers a dead man in the airplane lavatory. Deader ‘n a doornail. Suspending Disbelief: Nobody touches it, but Violet is tasked with rifling through the corpse’s pockets to get his ID, plus the pilot has to sashay back to view the body and hem and haw about making an unscheduled landing.

WHEN do things like that happen?! A murdered man sprawled in the bathroom, bloodied and so very dead, and the crew demands a passenger take control of the scene?!

But this is a Cozy so I hushed my racing thoughts and let go of all that: You’re KIDDING me!

Turns out the only place to land the aircraft is in tiny Holiday Junction where all onboard have to scramble for places to stay, waiting to be interviewed and checked out before being released to other flights. As it’s going alphabetically, Rhinehammer comes waaaay down the list, so Violet is there through the entire St. Paddy’s Day Festivities in this town that takes its Holidays seriously. Plus, she’s absolutely certain that if she can sleuth it around majorly, if she can solve the murder, she’ll definitely get that plum job in California.

Naturally another dead body turns up; naturally the local airport Security guard is kinda sorta hot; naturally there are eccentric townsfolk; naturally Violet gets to be in all the right places at just the right times.

I’ll give author Tonya Kappes half-kudos for Violet offering to give The Solve whenst accosted by the murderer, ready to tell our Villain just how and why these murders were committed, but then there’s a bit of a Boooo! because the Villain says Noooo, and then spills the beans about each and every step taken along the way, motive and insanity all rolled up into one.

P’raps this all sounds like I reeeeally enjoyed this not one iota, but it was sweet enough in its own way. Charming enough characters with Small Town Storylines being set up for future Holiday novels, and there was no instant Zounds! Attraction Galore between Violet and Uber-wealthy Rhett, the Airport Security dude. It’s just that, esPECially, when we got to the Motive, and the events that unfolded right at the very end, I felt I’d had to suspend not only m’ disbelief but also m’ good ol’ common sense as I thought the second murder victim was very very really really quite dead, and her story was at an end. ‘Twas not, and if this sounds confusing to you, well sorry, but I shan’t throw in a spoiler… tho it would add so much clarification to the exACt Whazza Goin’ On Here feeling.

Usually for St. Paddy’s Day I listen to an audiobook penned by an Irish author, performed by an Irish narrator, as that’s AWESOME! That said, I HAD to choose this audiobook cuz I quite simply just wanted to have something about the Day Itself. Holiday Junction is full of festive folks doing things like shamrock-ing everything up, turning fountain water green, hosting parades, having drinking contests which go awry for Violet (Will she ever be able to live down her make-up a mess, hair wildly askew, drunken-glazed eyes that hit the front page of the little village newspaper?). It’s a bit of a charmer, and tho the Whodunnit was a tad unsatisfying, the village’s sweetness was a plus.

Will I be hitting the second Holiday Junction Mystery (It’s for Mother’s Day—I dooo sooo hope nobody’s dearest mama bites it!!!)? Probably. Tho this comes across as formulaic Cozy, its characters were charming enough for dipping a toe into the next Holiday’s waters.

Besides which? Jiminy H. Freaking Cricket: I’m SUCH a lazy slug about scrolling for Better when Easier is to be found, like, right THERE.

So suuuue me!