An Accidental Murder

The Cascade Christmas Festival is days away, and Ellen Douglas has her hands full dressing the window at Someone Else's Closet. Then a car comes roaring through the intersection, misses her old friend Kay Price by inches, and speeds off into the December afternoon.

Kay is shaken but alive. That's the good news. The bad news is that this isn't her first close call. A friend killed in an accident. A house fire. A car whose steering failed at the worst possible moment. Taken one at a time, every one of them could be bad luck. Taken together, Ellen has stopped believing in luck.

With Louisa at her side, Tom finally settling into life in Cascade, and Chief Andrews reluctantly admitting she was right the last time, Ellen starts asking questions. Who wants Kay out of the way, and what are they looking for? The answers reach back to a death nobody called murder, and forward to a festival where the whole town will be gathered in one place.

Some accidents aren't. And this retiree has learned to trust her gut.

Set in a small Indiana town in the weeks before Christmas, An Accidental Murder is a cozy mystery for readers who like their sleuths sensible, their dogs loyal, and their villains hiding in plain sight among the holiday lights. Expect old friends, new neighbors, a consignment shop full of secondhand secrets, and a puzzle that Ellen solves with instinct and stubbornness rather than a badge.

An Accidental Murder is Book 2 in the Ellen Douglas Mysteries. Each book stands on its own, but readers who start with Murder in Cascade will know why the Chief listens now.