Review – Misstep

From the back cover: Winnie and Sadie are still fighting, and I'm still living in the strangest town on earth. It’s December in Road’s End, Virginia, a tiny town long forgotten by anyone but its residents, where Colonel Hugh Foster and his wife, Melanie, have chosen to live—for better or worse. The jury’s still out on that one! Road’s End is comprised entirely of senior citizens whose kids have grown and left for greener pastures. Hugh, Melanie, and Bristol (one of the few sane people in town) are faced with a crumbling church in desperate need of repair and renovation, a dwindling congregation of opinionated, ornery senior citizens, and a camel—yes, a camel. And if that's not enough, the trio and the rest of the Road's End residents, are soon mired in danger and intrigue when a group of gun-toting drug dealers arrive in town, bent on killing the church handyman, and conspiring to ruin the doggonedest record-breaking blizzard the town has ever seen. Poor drug dealers. My thoughts: MISSTEP is a cozy mystery, a comedy of errors, that is laugh out loud funny at times and other times just plain off-the-wall, slap-stick comedy. The writing took some getting used to as it is in first person for a chapter or two, then goes to third person and more telling, then it flips back to first person. The chapters are not clearly labeled whose point of view we're in, but it can be figured out. I could relate to some of the book -- like the church business meeting. The author could've sat through a business meeting at some of the churches I've been in. And I've had (or overheard) the same conversation about the milk truck stuck in the snow before. Probably all southern small towns could relate to that conversation. I'm not going to rave over this book... it was rather painful to me at times and I was groaning, but my husband (who loves this kind of humor) would have devoured it and probably read most of it to me out loud. So, while this book might not have been for me, if you like off-the-wall, slap-stick comedy, in your cozy mysteries, you will absolutely love MISSTEP.