Halloween Party Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross
Halloween Party Murder by Leslie Meier
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another completely blind read; this turned out to be three novellas, all of which involved murders occurring at Hallowe'en parties. I noticed that in each of the stories, main characters who were not detectives started attempting to find out who the killer is.
The first story is "Halloween Party Murder" by Leslie Meier. At a "halloween house", a woman is found face down in a bowl of water, having overdosed on drugs. It seems that she was an addict, and her husband is blamed for his murder.
I couldn't really work out if this was meant as a feminist tome, or a critique of feminism, as the husband is promptly dismissed as "toxic", and his lawyer slammed for attempting to defend him.
The story also had a subplot involving an impending mayoral election, which was what started off most of the politics and social commentary.
The second story, "Death of a Halloween Party Monster" involves some kids believing they killed a man using magic (though in reality, he was hit over the head with a mallet). It was another by-the-numbers type mystery, which threw in a few surprises along the way.
For some reason, the narrative was constantly interrupted by diary entries (I couldn't figure out which character they were meant to be written by), which presumably were supposed to reveal something that the audience had missed. For some reason, each diary entry would be followed by recipes.
The final story, "Scared Off" involved an upstairs neighbour being killed, and apparently "flying" down the stairs, according to the children who witnessed it. One of the mothers, who also narrates the story, starts digging into the woman's past, and realises that lots of people had reasons to kill her.
Overall, this felt like an average book; the stories were enjoyable, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to pick up any other stories by the same writers.
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This could have fitted more than one of the October Calendar of Crime criteria, but for this one I'll definitely tick off "Hallowe'en".
January: 3/10
February: 4/10
March: 2/10
April: 3/10
May: 3/10
June: 4/10
July: 2/10
August: 3/10
September: 3/10
1. October in the title
2. Author's birth month
3. Primary action takes place in this month
4. Hallowe'en
5. Other October holiday (are there any?)
6. Original publication month
7. Book title has word starting with O
8. Hallowe'en related image or Autumn scene on cover
9. Year of the Rooster
10. Costume/disguise or mistaken identity