Pirate Patty Reviews

A holiday tradition turns deadly, but is the paranormal museum to blame?

Maddie Kosloski is no fan of San Benedetto’s Christmas Cow, a thirty-foot straw bovine that graces the town square every December. For one thing, the cow displaces her paranormal museum as the number one tourist attraction. Plus, every year, despite around-the-clock surveillance, the cow goes up in flames.

But this year, there’s more than just a fire blazing in Maddie’s wine-country hometown. One of the Christmas Cow guards has been found with an arrow in his chest, and Maddie’s new haunted cowbell exhibit is fueling a panic. Are the spirits in her museum getting too hot to handle? If Maddie can’t stop the hysteria—and the murderous archer—her holiday plans might not be the only thing full of holes.

Maddie is getting the hang of things in her Paranormal Museum. Especially now with the holidays here. Her shop is full of fairies, strange objects and those blasted cow bells that everyone is freaking out over.

In support of their sister city in Sweden, the folks here put up their own straw cow. 30 foot high. And every year it gets burned down, much like the goat the Swedes erect! I have seen that one and it is huge and interesting. But Maddie’s mother, Fran and the folks at the Ladies Aid Society and the Dairy Association have decided to add extra security this year with a couple of volunteers each night.

When Fran takes her turn with Bill from the Dairy Association, things quickly turn from harmless prank to deadly murder. And with Maddie and her mother getting shot at, car bombed and more, it’s getting hard to stick their oh so funny noses into the mystery of what is going on in their town!

There were plenty of suspects in this one. There were more lovely interesting characters that I would love to know in real life.

The ending was a surprise and I guess I have a new Cozy Author to follow!

Thanks Netgalley/MidnightInk March 08, 2018