Although this isn’t the first of the Lucy Stone Mysteries by Leslie Meier, it is the first I’ve read. With a title like Tippy Toe I expected a baby-centric cosy mystery. While it does contain a pregnacy, this cosy mystery has a dark side too. It shows not all family units are happy ones and touches on domestic violence.
The plot
Fresh from her sleuthing triumph in Mail-Order Murder, Lucy Stone of Tinker’s Cove is taking time off from work to organize her three children and get ready for a fourth.
But besides shuttling the kids to school, baseball practice, and Madame Tatiana’s ballet studio, Lucy finds herself on the trail of Caro – Caroline Hutton – a retired dance teacher who has mysteriously disappeared.
And to make the summer really murder, the irascible local hardware merchant, Morrill Slack, takes a deathblow to the head with a video camera, and Franny Small – the hapless salesgirl with the perfect motive – has no alibi for how she spent the afternoon of the murder.
When Lucy’s not eating peanut butter-and-fluffernutter sandwiches (which the newest member of the Stone family seems to crave incessantly), she’s busy hitting up police detective Barney Culpepper for everything he knows. With a little research and a few trips to the library (between sewing tutus and broiling burgers), Lucy tries to discover just what happened to Caro – and whom she was protecting when she vanished.
Racing against the clock to save her neighbor’s life – and get her own seven-year-old prima ballerina on stage – Lucy wraps up the Big Case just in time for a visit from the stork.
If you want to start at the beginning
“Mistletoe Murder” is the first Lucy stone Mystery.
As if baking Christmas cookies, knitting a jumper for her husband’s gift, and making her daughter’s angel costume for the church pageant weren’t enough things for Lucy Stone’s busy Christmas schedule, she’s also working the night shift at a mail-order company. But when she discovers Sam Miller, its very wealthy founder, dead in his car from an apparent suicide, the sleuth in her knows something just doesn’t smell right . . .
Lucy is convinced that someone murdered Sam. But who? And why? With each twist she uncovers in this bizarre case, another shocking revelation is exposed. Now, as Christmas draws near and Lucy gets dangerously close to the truth, she’s about to receive a present from Santa she didn’t ask for – a killer who won’t be satisfied until everyone on his shopping list is dead, including Lucy herself . . .