Overview
Nobody likes a good firing better than Vermont potter Carolyn Emerson—but a grisly discovery in her own backyard may be too hot to handle.
It’s easy enough to misplace a clay piece in a busy paint-your-own-pottery store like Fire at Will. Misplacing a person, however . . . ? Carolyn certainly can’t explain how or why renowned ceramics artist Charles Potter disappeared en route to an appearance at her shop. But everyone’s really thrown when the man finally turns up—and turns out to be none other than her assistant David’s long-estranged father and the conniving ex-husband of Carolyn’s best friend, Hannah.
If Richard Atkins (a.k.a. Charles Potter) thinks he can just waltz back into Maple Ridge and smooth everything over, he’s got another thing coming. Unfortunately, that thing turns out to be murder . . . in Carolyn’s Raku pit, no less. Now, with David and Hannah prime as the suspects, it's up to Carolyn and her friends in the amateur potters’ group the Firing Squad to crack the case—before it explodes in their faces.
Includes instructions for a woven clay bowl project!
After meeting most of the original characters from the first book, minus the killer that was unveiled in it, I got right back into Carolyn's life, full of ups and downs as usual. Trying to stay in business with finicky customers, surprise visits from people from her past and finding yet another body, Carolyn has her hands fuller than before. Not only she feels obligated to solve another gristly death but two of her friends, David and Hannah are somehow connected and she has to decide whether to stand by them or forget all loyalties and solve the crime without emotional attachment.
Summer approaching the small Vermont town brings in some new faces into the neighborhood and catches up nicely to the ones I missed and met before and as usual has plenty of fun pottery woven into the story. Carolyn and her husband Bill are as sweet as every, and even though the bicker I enjoy their tight camaraderie and all the food everyone is always eating in this book. This was a very fast read, can probably be swallowed up in one day. Also I have to agree with the review below mine that Carolyn was meddling into everyone life and checking out their alibis but at least they told her off properly and created little drama, it was entertaining, so it didn't discourage me from enjoying this book. Most cozy mysteries have a heroine that does more work and snooping than all the cops in the book, otherwise it would not be a cozy mystery but a dry crime novel.
- Kasia S.