This cosy mystery features a music festival event at the Blue Ridge Mountains location of Celebrations at Ivy Springs. MURDER STRIKES A CHORD is the first in a series called the Pearly Girls. 

Cassidy Jamison runs Celebrations and she starts by introducing herself to the road crew who arrive to set up the stage. The four sixty-ish ‘Pearly Girls’ are employees at her late grandmother’s event-planning business, which she inherited. The four lively ladies are more than delighted to have a rock-and-roll music festival which will have a mix of tribute bands and the real thing, with headliners the Weathermen, a famous rock band that never split up but doesn’t release new music. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before the band members are at odds – well they never got a break from one another over the years, and performers are notoriously temperamental. At night, in pitch dark, somehow a murder occurs.

Cassidy and her chihuahua mix Elvis are out walking when the brave little dog discovers a body, and the investigation begins. Can the Weathermen continue to perform, and will the media or general opinion tear down the rest of the festival? Poor Cassidy has a lot of organising problems.

If you want to see behind the scenes of a music festival you’ll be interested in this amusing tale, whether you like rock-and-roll or bluegrass. I found a few issues stopped me from being fully convinced. One is that with the emphasis on the golden years staff, I kept thinking Cassidy was a similar age or fifty-ish, but she’s supposed to be younger. She does a lot of computer searches about the band, but so does the staff. Cassidy could perhaps have used an iPod to play technopunk or hip-hop on her walks. Cassidy smiles at a handsome police officer, which is stereotypical for cosies, and I’m thinking, he’s going to be married, it’s a small town. Despite having paid security staff patrolling, Cassidy never thinks of phoning or messaging them. She calls 911 and tells them as far as she knows nobody is near her, but then has to wait while they drive out to the grounds and try to locate her. Why not call her 24-hour on-site security? They know where the grotto is, and they can make sure there are no prowlers.

With extremely tasty foods provided and plenty of healthy exercise, I enjoyed MURDER STRIKES A CHORD. Heather Weidner has previously written other cosies and her Pearly Girls enjoy snooping into the lives of the famous. Normally a series is named for the main sleuth, so this seems an attempt to capture two age groups, modern festivals with nostalgia.