It is almost time for the February meeting of
The Cozy Mystery Book Club! This coming Tuesday, Feb 23rd on YouTube at 7pm EST, you can join in the live stream discussion of this month's book
Crime & Punctuation by Kaithlyn Dunnett. As you can see in my picture from an Instagram post I made, I borrowed the book from my local library. The cover of the book is a bit of an optical illusion, looking like four-book spines. This is the first book in the Deadly Edits Series and after this book, there are two additional books so far--and the covers that look like book spines continue on book two and book three's covers.
Mikki Lincoln, the protagonist of this series, is a retired school teacher. Additionally, she is a recent widow who has moved back to her hometown. Mikki edits books on the side to help pay for renovations to her hundred-year-old home. If it weren't for The Cozy Mystery Book Club, I don't think I would have picked up this book. I have so many cozy mysteries yet to read on my kindle and on my bookshelf. Of course, that is one of the reasons I like to participate in the club, I wind up reading stories I would not have read otherwise.
As I began reading Crime & Punctuation, I realized I don't think I have read any book told from the POV of a woman who was in her late 60s. I've read plenty of books in my life and many of them are from a woman's POV but the vast majority of those books take place with characters who are under 40. It would seem that the cozy mystery is a subgenre that allows for women who are older to be protagonists! I hope as more cozy mysteries are published, that the subgenre continues to broaden the types of people that get to be protagonists. I want more cozies told from the POV of Black and Brown women of all ages and also from members of the LBGTQIA community. As a reader, I value stories written by and about people living completely different lives than me.
Alright, back to the book. Mikki uses her skills as a former teacher and an editor to discover who killed Tiffany and why. I enjoyed how Kaitlyn Dunnett uses a book manuscript as the central clue in this plot. In the book, Mikki talks about how new writers make mistakes in their writing and as I was reading Mikki's critiques, I thought Kaitlyn Dunnett must have to be very careful in her writing so the character she created wouldn't tell her to fix her writing! The book takes place in the fall in a small town in the
Catskills. Once again, which is very 2021 of me, I add the Catskills to my long list of places I would like to visit after the pandemic.
4.5 Stars to Crime & Punctuation a solid start for a mystery series: small town, curious sleuth, cat companion, a bookish job, and a big old house in a scenic area --and a cornucopia of townspeople!
*****
My weather app says that Chicagoland should be getting temps in the 30s this weekend. I hope so, I want some of this snow to melt!
This is how much snow we had on January 30th!
This is how much snow we have now.
I think that's enough snow, I'm good with temps too high for snow moving forward!
