Sunday, 8 December 2024

Silent Nights Are Murder (A Poppy McAllister Mystery Book # 9) by Libby Klein

Despite her best efforts, gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister finds herself confounded by a case of murder this Christmas in the latest installment of this delightful culinary B&B mystery series!

Ever since Thanksgiving, when an engagement ring in a velvet box—and no gift tag—was left behind, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was the cat Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all . . .  (Summary via Goodreads)


I hope that you are a fan of the Poppy McAllister Mystery series written by Libby Klein.  This series is so much fun to read !!  Not only is it fun but as you read each new book in this series you feel closer to the characters which makes the stories mean so much more !!

Silent Nights Are Murder is the ninth book in the series and boy, oh boy, does a lot happen !!  Even if this is the first book of this series that you pick up and choose to read, you will still take away as much as someone who has read the previous eight .... but I do encourage you to go back and catch up, just because the books are so good !!!

In Silent Nights Are Murder Poppy and her crew have just celebrated Thanksgiving and when they were cleaning up, Poppy's best friend Sawyer finds a ring box with the help of Poppy's cat Figaro.  Now there is no clear answer as to who the ring box belongs to or who the intended person is that the question will be asked to.  It could be Poppy with Gia proposing but Sawyer and her boyfriend Ben are in a good place, Poppy's ex-mother-in-law and Smitty are madly in love and even Aunt Ginny and Royce who aren't getting any younger could be the ones saying  "I do".

So the ladies decide to hold another dinner party to try to find out who will crack and admit they lost the ring.  But before Poppy can give it any thought, she is called to her ex-boyfriend's restaurant when a dead body is found in one of the walk-in freezers and a note with "Get Poppy" is taped to him.

Poppy does not know the deceased or who taped the note on him so she wants to just walk away but when Tim, her ex, pleads for her help, she is torn.  Then she finds out that his girlfriend and business partner Gigi is bursting with a pregnancy proving that Tim didn't cry too long over their last break-up.  Even though Gigi cannot stand her, she agrees to go undercover and work in the restaurant to try to find out who is guilty.

Meanwhile back at the Butterfly Wings Bed and Breakfast the crew is preparing for the dinner to uncover who is getting engaged and then all heck breaks lose when Poppy's mother shows upo under a false name !!  Poppy's mother left her with Aunt Ginny and her grandmother over thirty years ago and hasn't been heard from since .... so Poppy wants to know what is going on but she cannot believe anything that the woman says !!!

Readers will fall in love once again with this latest installment of the Poppy McAllister Mystery series.  Klein knows how to reel you in and keep you on the hook throughout the entire book.  And in Silent Nights Are Murder there is so much to love and she keeps the surprises going throughout the entire book all the way to the last chapter.

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