Bea Reviews Eggnog Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis & Barbara Ross

Publisher: Kensington
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: October 25th, 2016
Challenges: NetGalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
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Blurb from goodreads:

With the fireplace crackling, the tree twinkling, and the carols humming, few things in life are as picture perfect as Christmas in Maine—until murder dampens the holiday spirit. It must be something in the eggnog . . .
 
EGGNOG MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
When a gift-wrapped bottle of eggnog—allegedly from the Real Beard Santa Club—proves to be a killer concoction for a Tinker’s Cove local, all Lucy Stone wants for Christmas is to find the murdering mixologist who’s stirring up trouble.
 
DEATH BY EGGNOG by LEE HOLLIS
Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell has never cared much for Bar Harbor’s grouchy town librarian, Agatha Farnsworth. But after the Scroogy senior has a fatal—and suspicious—allergic reaction to supposedly non-dairy eggnog, it’s up to Hayley to ladle out some justice.

NOGGED OFF by BARBARA ROSS
Julia Snowden’s tenant Imogen Geinkes seems to be jinxed. First, her poorly named “Killer Eggnog” gives all her co-workers food poisoning at the holiday party, then her boyfriend’s body shows up in Julia’s moving truck as she’s headed back to Busman’s Harbor. Now Julia has to get moving to catch the cold-hearted culprit.

Cozy up with a glass of eggnog and enjoy the spirit of murder and mystery in a Yultide treat perfect for those winter holidays .

My Thoughts:

I love cozies and I'd read two of these authors before so this book appealed to me right off the bat. As it turned out, the stories by the authors I was already familiar with were pleasant, if not great, while the new to me author was a huge disappointment. Two of the stories were met the anthology's theme and also lived up to their story titles. The third one had a more peripheral eggnog connection but it was set at Christmas, and there was definitely a murder.

Eggnog Murder by Leslie Meier: It was a heavy-handed message story that took a while for various threads to come together. It did present a realistic look at challenges of having the adult children living under one for extended periods of time and there was a twist that in retrospect I should have seen but nicely done. Lived up to its title. A decent addition to the Lucy Stone series.

Death by Eggnog by Lee Hollis: The worst story of the bunch. Boring story, uneven pacing, and some medical WTFery that killed any chance of respect for the heroine. It did fit the anthology theme and live up to its story title. This was my first, and probably last, story by this author.

The 'heroine' of the story sees a woman having an anaphylactic reaction and her first thought is that she should perform a tracheostomy because she saw it on TV. Her second thought is that she doesn't know how to do it and that she's not a doctor (she's a newspaper columnist). She decides to do it anyway. For better or worse however, the patient died before our alleged heroine found a knife.

What the ever lovin' f***?!?! WHY? Why wouldn't you check for an epi-pen? Offer an antihistamine? call 911? Okay, they were called but only after the anaphylactic woman dropped dead. Why the ****would you even seriously consider doing a medical procedure you saw once on TV that may or may not help and that you have no clue how to perform and you could do more harm than good? I lost all respect for our 'heroine' after that.

Oh, and it's a tracheotomy. A tracheostomy is the actual incision, not the procedure. Sorry author, you and your copy editor blew it.

Nogged Off by Barbara Ross: This story had the least relevance to the theme of eggnog murder but there is eggnog and unrelated murder. The story had a few twists, good pacing and development, and held my interest. It was the best of the bunch. I actually liked this story better than the one full-length book that I've read so far in the series.