Lenape Hollow, New York State is the location for this mystery featuring a lady sleuth of mature years - Mikki Lincoln. While she’s editing books as a freelance to supplement her pension, Mikki gets on the wrong side of a property speculator. Feldman\'s Catskill Resort Hotel was like the hotel from the Dirty Dancing film. But we are no longer back in the hotel’s heyday and Mikki is working on a memoir by Sunny Feldman, the last of the family who ran the premises. Her account might be truth or A FATAL FICTION.
Greg Onslow has a shouting match with Mikki over the memoir, which is stirring up publicity already and making people resent the destruction of the hotel. He’s been involved in several big property deals which took investments for redevelopment but came to nothing. At the demolition site which the hotel property has become, a night security guard discovers a body in a basement trench. Mongaup Valley Ventures has to put the work on hold, like it or not.
As quite a lot of the characters are seniors it’s clear they would not have chosen to stumble around an unlit wide area of earthworks and machinery at night. But two young relatives of Mikki’s, Luke Darbee and Nick Carpenter, are in the right age group and she’s under suspicion herself, so Mikki decides to dig around and write down all the answers until something spells guilt. I enjoyed meeting this precise and well-spoken character.
One episode doesn’t ring true for me; when Mikki decides to leave her home secretly by climbing out a top window, onto the sloping roof, and jumping down the last six or seven feet to the grass. Mikki has repeatedly told us she is in her seventies, when many ladies suffer from brittle bones, and she is no fitness fanatic, nor fleeing danger. I am sure this exercise could be done in case of a fire, but otherwise we don’t see seniors climbing onto roofs and jumping off them.
Kaitlyn Dunnett is a pseudonym covering the Deadly Edits series for Kathy Lynn Emerson, author of the Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries, a wonderful historical crime series. While I’m always pleased when an author makes a new departure, the differences between modern New York State and Elizabethan England are many, so fans will probably settle on one set as their favourite. A FATAL FICTION will entertain you and keep you guessing.
Freelance book editor Mikki Lincoln knows the makings of a well-written story. But she’ll need to choose her words wisely when a new assignment introduces a deadly plot twist . . .
Forgotten on the outskirts of quaint Lenape Hollow, Feldman’s Catskill Resort Hotel has outlasted its heyday as a popular tourist destination and now awaits demolition. But once Mikki is hired to edit a revealing memoir by Sunny Feldman, the last living relative of its original owners, the doomed resort quickly ends up back in the spotlight . . .
Unfortunately, everyone’s attention shifts to Mikki when a body is discovered at the demolition site. Seen arguing with deceptive entrepreneur Greg Onslow right before his shocking death, the editor has no choice but to spell out exactly why she isn’t guilty of murdering him . . .
Mikki’s dash for answers brings Greg’s shady dealings into focus, along with an unsettling list of potential culprits. As false leads and dead ends force her to revise theories on who really did it, can Mikki judge fact from fiction before the investigation reaches a terrifying conclusion?
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