I do enjoy Judith, husband Joe and even brother-in-law Bill. I get very tired of cousin Renie. She is almost mean to Judith on a regular basis and while Judith seems to take it, I get annoyed.

However, I enjoyed the mystery in this one and really didn't know who the killer was. There are a lot of possibilities and with Judith and Renie being in Scotland on vacation they don't know the players well at all.

This one involves jealousy, greed, and stupidity.

I'll keep reading the series and doing my best to tolerate Renie for the sake of Judith and Joe. ( )

The mystery has center stage for this book, which takes place in Scotland, at a Castle that has been somewhat turned into a Bed and Breakfast. I have to say that I didn't quite see how the setup was all that believable. One family owns the castle, the previous owners work for him, there's a company in town causing all kinds of mischief with a wife not devoted to her husband and all sorts. You name it, this book has it, including a hamster that rides around in the back of a pizza delivery guy's car all day. (If this were reality, I'd be calling the authorities on that one.) Plenty of mysterious things happening, plenty of places to point fingers when murder is mentioned in several places, but the whole thing seems almost too complex while the characters seem to have been lost in the shuffle.

I am not certain if the exchanges between the cousins were meant to be amusing, frustrating or otherwise engaging, but I found them somewhat staged at times and a complete turn around at others, when the totally random nature of one of the women seemed to make her the least likable person on the planet. I find it hard to believe that the mystery solving cousin can put up with her rude counterpart. Even if I had grown up with my own cousin and was as close to her as these two are, I would not have let her get away with all that was going on here, in fact, I would probably have tried to prevent her from making the same remarks and ending up in the same situations, for her own sake.

This is one of those murder mystery books that you don't read because you're expecting to be wowed, but because you're looking to engage your brain while killing a few hours of your day. It's an interesting mystery, if complex, and its location makes it somewhat unique, but don't pick it up if you're a reader who wants something with depth in the character or location of a story. Visuals and even some of the characters (who just disappear for most of the book, brushed off like a piece of straw from someone's shoulder) are left for your imagination to come up with. ( )

Tension and fright but too complicated for the reader to be able to figure out on her own. Some description but not enough. Silly relationship between two cousins who actually sometimes call each other "coz." One of the women is often rude rather than being eccentric or cute. I assume that the novel is intended to be somewhat comic, but, while it is sometimes clever, it is never actually funny. ( )