Mystery on Hidden Lane (An Eve Mallow Mystery Book 1) by Clare Chase

This book is available for request until the 30th of Jan

This is the first of a new cozy mystery series, and once again I had to check and see if this would be one that I could follow for a few more books ensuring a happy reading future for me.

This tale begins well, and I had high hopes for it. It ended on a good enough note, and I will be picking up the next book in the series (if given a chance), but I would have liked this book more if things had been slightly different. We have Eve who has a part-time job writing obituaries and insists on doing a thorough job. This leads her to rent a house for a time in the town where a famous musician recently passed away. When she gets there and starts to settle in, the news that foul play was involved and this has her mind racing. Since she is already set to interview everyone concerned, she sets up an excel sheet to cover the corroborating details to try and map out the culprit. All of this, as well as some of the main side characters, was well written. I was enjoying the time spent and te meticulous manner that Eve conducted her research. Till the point that it got too fastidious. I read at a pretty good pace until I hit the multiple layers of analysis that Eve was doing.

The research and the delay in getting to the end was the only reason that I am giving this three instead of four stars out of five. As mentioned at the beginning of this review, I would still read more about Eve because she seems to be a level-headed character who would be interesting to see further pursuits of. The most realistic but relatively unique behaviour was that of her Ex-husband. I have seen the Ex behave erratically and a little heavy-handed in other series’ but this guy took the cake for the most random behaviour given the fact that he was the one who left.

I look forward to seeing how Eve deals with that, too, going forward. The mystery of the dead musician was compelling only because of the process of elimination and the back and forth with the information Eve had on hand. I only wish it was done more crisply. Someone with more patience than me would enjoy this far more than I did and I would recommend this to other readers of the genre.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.