Quilt City Murders

 

Quilt City Murders (A Hadley Carroll Mystery Book 1)  by Bruce Leonard. Touch Point Press, 2022. 297 pages. ***

Hadley Carroll is rebelling against being demoted from a general-assignment reporter to placing copies of the Paducah Chronicle inside racks around town. Her solution is to sling the burlap bag of biodegradable papers into the Ohio River, never to be seen or read again. When Hadley sees a shimmer of red in the water that turns out to be the left arm and hand of her former fiancé, she is determined to find out why Matt dumped her and who hated him enough to kill him.  Was it Nick Stoddard who groped her during a Christmas party and caused her demotion? Was Matt secretly working on a news article about N&S Shipping, was that why he sought and received their financial records? Are all police officers corrupt or is Officer Williams an anomaly who likes bullying and beating up people especially Hadley? 30,000 quilters will be attending Quilt Week and Hadley is determined to expose the killer even if it causes unfavorable press about Paducah at the worst possible time. 

Quilters will be able to identify with Quilt Week and the sights and sounds of Paducah, KY. Advertised as a cozy mystery, it is an entertaining debut novel. My only drawback is that when starting the novel, the "voice" of the main character did not ring true for me. Difficult to pinpoint why, the quilting terms and descriptions were correct, however, not the way I think or talk about men or as a quilter. By the end of the book, I found Hadley to be more believable and look forward to the next Hadley Carroll Mystery. One of Leonard's strengths is his advertising campaign for this novel, he has written to Quilt Guilds promoting his book and daily I see an ad on Facebook. 

Bruce Leonard has written for newspapers, magazines and websites and this is his debut novel. He is a writer, editor, and photographer. His  novel Hard Exit, a hardboiled detective novel that takes place in Los Angeles and is narrated by depressed private investigator Jack Drake, is slated to be published in 2023. The sequel to Quilt City Murders, titled Quilt City: Panic in Paducah, is being read by beta readers now. He lives with his wife, Sedonia Sipes, in Illinois and has dedicated this book to her and to his parents, Bruce and Barbara Leonard. 

To learn more about Leonard, click here.

The Kindle version is on sale for 4.99 at Amazon 

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