Book Review: A Willing Murder

Sara Medlar is a household name in romance, with millions of books sold. But lately, retirement has been boring her and she’s found herself back in her hometown of Lachlan, Florida, remodeling the grand old mansion she’d admired as a child. Then Sara’s niece Kate comes to town for a job in real estate; she approaches her estranged yet incredibly famous aunt for a place to stay while she gets herself settled. But when she arrives, she finds she’s not the only long-term houseguest. Jackson Wyatt, with his deniable good looks and charm, already has his own room and clearly has got her aunt wrapped around his finger.

However, when two skeletons are accidentally uncovered in the quiet town, this unlikely trio is suddenly thrust together by a common goal: to solve a mystery everyone else seems eager to keep under wraps. United by a sense of justice and the desire to right old wrongs, Sara, Kate and Jack will have to dig into Lachlan’s murky past to unravel the small town’s dark secrets and work to bring the awful truth to light.

A Willing Murder by Jude Deveraux was published September 2018 by Mira, a Harlequin imprint.

I chose this first book in Deveraux's Medlar Mystery series for the July title of my library's mystery book club discussion. This is the first novel of Deveraux's that I have read, even though she's been publishing books since 1980. This one was written when she was around 70, so she had plenty of novels under her belt and on the bestsellers' lists before starting this series.

And that might be where I felt a little indifferent about this one at various points. It really takes several long chapters before things get rolling (after a flashback prologue from the mysterious killer's perspective), and some of the expositional dialogue comes across a little clunky to me in places. I certainly can see the themes she wanted to explore: small town gossip/secrets and prejudices; all very worthy topics for a mystery or crime tale.

Foundational, it is a good plot. However, I found a lot of missteps and poor choices that really distracted at times. That includes the story settings of 2017 and 1997. They did not work for me. It seems like if the story was set in 1997 and 1977 it would be more believable. I can't picture high school kids of 1997 acting the way they are portrayed in this book.