When two gunshots echo through the forest to the northwest of Melissa “Story” Fischer’s home and apiary, she doesn’t think too much of it; it's probably just a hunter stalking a turkey or some other similarly unfortunate creature. And besides, she has more important things on her mind than random noises coming from the woods – things such as tracking down an errant swarm of honeybees and returning them to their hive.
But the shots take on a whole new light when Story discovers that former high-school-classmate Lauren Kerrigan is not only back in town, fresh off a 16-year stint in prison for killing the town's police chief while driving drunk, but has gone missing from her mother’s home – together with her mother’s gun. Lauren’s relatives fear she intends to turn the gun on herself, but when Story and her boyfriend Hunter stumble across the corpses of Lauren and local curmudgeon Hetty Crossman lying in the woods, the search-and-rescue operation turns into a murder investigation. The current police chief, Johnny Jay (Story’s archenemy since childhood and the son of the police chief killed by Lauren all those years ago) seems determined to tie Story to the crimes, but Story is convinced Johnny Jay himself did the deed and intends to make sure he gets his comeuppance. Can Story catch the killer without ending up behind bars or falling prey, herself?
Mind Your Own Beeswax is the second in author Hannah Reed’s Queen Bee Mystery series. The book is equal parts Justified and I Know What You Did Last Summer, with a splash of Donna-Andrews-style humor thrown in for good measure. The prose is witty, charming, and peppered with beautiful imagery (“A full moon grinned from the sky, creating tall shadows from short objects.”), the plot is rich and complex, and the mystery is cleverly constructed and skillfully written, tying past events to the present in a way that adds import and intrigue to both.
Story makes for a fabulous heroine and an engaging narrator. Strong, smart, snarky, and positively bullheaded in her independence, she’s a character for whom readers can’t help but root. Her unconventional investigation style is a refreshing departure from the well-mannered methods employed by the stereotypical amateur sleuth (Tricking the medical examiner into getting ragingly drunk so she can pump him for information? Brilliant!), and I’m hard-pressed to think of a character I’d rather befriend in real life.
The book’s supporting cast is marvelous, as well. In particular, Johnny Jay makes a fantastic villain; lots of writers create antagonistic relationships between their main characters and the local law enforcement, but writing the chief as a morally flexible bully who’s pursuing a lifelong vendetta against Story is a nice twist on the norm.
I also really liked Story’s whiny, entitled sister Holly, though I found myself incredibly annoyed by her propensity for “text-speech”. Holly’s an otherwise intelligent and likable character. She isn’t written like an overgrown teenager with the exception of the ridiculous manner in which she occasionally speaks. I know the quirk was likely written for laughs, but instead of adding humor, I just found it distracting and irritating, and I hope it’s a characteristic that Reed will let fall by the wayside as the series progresses.
The other thing that really irked me about this book – and that ultimately caused me to downgrade my rating from a 9 to an 8 – is Story’s tendency to deliver information using bullet points. It would be one thing if Reed reserved use of the device for the sort of mandatory info dumps that typify hobby-themed cozies (in this case, facts about honeybees, facts about beeswax, kinds of creatures that prey on honeybees, etc.), but to me, the fact that she used bullet points in place of prose or dialogue to convey the killer’s confession is unforgivable. In my opinion, bullet points have no place in fiction. They’re not quirky or stylish – they’re lazy, and they suck the life out of any information they’re used to relay. Reed’s prose generally has great flow – she’s doing herself a great disservice by not relying on it to do more.
That said, I greatly enjoyed the book overall. Mind Your Own Beeswax is the first thing I’ve read by Reed, but I doubt it’ll be the last. Run out and buy yourself a copy; it’s a great way to pass an afternoon.
~ Kat |
