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A review by lisanne624
Maggie Dove by Susan Breen
2.0
Maggie Dove is a Sunday school teacher who lives in the Hudson Valley. She is a widow who lost her only child, Juliet, in a car accident 20 years before. Her professor husband left her well-provided for and she is also still receiving royalties from some mystery novels she wrote a while ago. She is something of a surrogate mother to the policeman Peter, who was her daughter's boyfriend. Peter's life, as well as Maggie's, has basically been on hold since Juliet's death. The book opens with Maggie in conflict with her neighbor, Marcus Bender. Maggie's beloved tree, planted by her father, is blocking Bender's view of the river, and he insists it has to go. This has led to a frosty relationship between the neighbors. It comes as a shock when Bender is found dead under Maggie's tree. At first everyone assumes it was a natural death, but it soon is discovered that Bender was poisoned.
Maggie frequently visits her lifelong friend Winifred, who is suffering from Parkinson's Disease and lives in a nursing home. While Maggie struggles with her lingering grief over her daughter and worry about a killer being on the loose, another death hits close to home. While Maggie tries to figure out if there is a connection between the two deaths, she has to deal with Peter spiraling out of control.
I sort of felt that the identity of the killer was pretty obvious from the beginning, even if the motives took a while to be revealed. I was also confused about Maggie's name. Sometimes she's called Maggie, sometimes Dove and sometimes Maggie Dove. It turns out Dove was her married last name. So why some of her closest friends would call her by her last name was a mystery that was never explained. Other than that, the book was a pretty general mystery. I wasn't that interested in the characters or the resolution of the case, but it was a pleasant enough story.
I received an electronic copy of this book in exchange for this review.
Maggie frequently visits her lifelong friend Winifred, who is suffering from Parkinson's Disease and lives in a nursing home. While Maggie struggles with her lingering grief over her daughter and worry about a killer being on the loose, another death hits close to home. While Maggie tries to figure out if there is a connection between the two deaths, she has to deal with Peter spiraling out of control.
I sort of felt that the identity of the killer was pretty obvious from the beginning, even if the motives took a while to be revealed. I was also confused about Maggie's name. Sometimes she's called Maggie, sometimes Dove and sometimes Maggie Dove. It turns out Dove was her married last name. So why some of her closest friends would call her by her last name was a mystery that was never explained. Other than that, the book was a pretty general mystery. I wasn't that interested in the characters or the resolution of the case, but it was a pleasant enough story.
I received an electronic copy of this book in exchange for this review.