Kelly's new series is off to a great start, with enjoyable characters, a good mystery and plenty of renovation information. I can't wait to read more.

New series! Whitney is a fixer upper and flipper in one. I enjoyed how the scene and series is set and getting to know her family. I thought it was a little odd to have the cat weighing in, so if that is something that bugs you, be warned.

Whitney loves real estate. She can’t resist taking an eyesore and turning it into a piece of art. When Whitney has a chance to buy a crumbling property from a client, she wastes no time. However, when a dead body is found in the garden Whitney has to solve the murder before she loses her investment to forclosure. This is the first book and a solid start to a new series. Whitney is a fascinating protagonist. A unique aspect of this book is seeing life from Whitney’s cat, Sawdust, perspective. The mystery was well crated despite being a bit slow in pace. I look forward to seeing how the series progresses.

I voluntarily agreed to read a copy of this book supplied by Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own and in no way have been influenced by anyone.

Dead as a Door Knocker: A House-Flipper Mystery is book 1 in Diane Kelly’s House Flipper Mystery series. The book centers around property manager and carpenter Whitney Whitaker. She lives at home with her parents and her cat Sawdust. Whitney’s dream is to become a successful real estate agent and she is in the process of taking the real estate test to become licensed. In the meantime she has to evict 3 young guys from a property rental who have trashed the place. When the house’s owner who is also a client of hers offers Whitney the house at a really good deal, she takes the offer planning on flipping the house then selling it for a large profit. She goes half and half with her cousin Buck and they buy the house but little do they know that is where the nightmare begins.

When the house’s original owner is found murdered, Whitney is the prime suspect and the murder weapon belongs to her. On paper she’s got a motive, there is evidence that leads to her and she realizes she needs to find who the real killer is before she winds up behind bars.

We get the story through Whitney’s POV and her cat Sawdust as well. The storyline takes a few twists and turns and there’s a list of other suspects all with motives so I didn’t figure out who did it until the end. The books wraps up nicely but also sets it up for the next installment in the series.

This was more of a quiet, slow paced, cozy mystery without too much cozy in it. I would have liked a little more descriptive writing in terms of setting especially. The story set in Nashville but I wouldn’t know that without reading the blurb. There is also the possibility of a love interest between Whitney and the detective on the case and I would have liked to see more of a wrap up with that at the end but maybe he will be in book 2. I liked that Sawdust gave us his POV in some of the chapters, that was a cute touch.

Within a few pages, I knew I was going to really enjoy this book. Debut of a new cozy series for Diane Kelly, it has all the elements to draw the reader in: a strong point of view from a winning protagonist, Whitney Whitaker, well drawn characters, a different take on the mileau, strong plot but written with style. Whitney, a property manager and carpenter gets an opportunity to purchase a dilapidated house for a reasonable price. Knowing that she has the skills for the repairs make the opportunity for flipping the house undeniably appealing. The story has twists and turns from there but always plays fair with the readers and true to Whitney's character. Looking forward to meeting her again too.

For whatever reason, I couldn't get past the beginning of this book. There was nothing wrong with the book; I probably just wasn't in right head-space to get into it. I'll try again in the future, as the description still appeals to me.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I liked reading about the house-flipping. Sawdust the cat is my favorite character. I really want to read the next book in this series.

I received a free ARC from the publisher and NetGalley for an honest review.

The first book in Diane Kelly's House Flipper Mystery series is Dead as a Door Knocker. Whitney works as a property manager and is studying for her real estate license. When the opportunity to flip a house presents itself, she cannot resist. It seems like a sure thing until the house catches fire with her and her cat inside. The situation gets worse when a body is discovered in the house's flower bed. A few technical things got to me. No one would start work with a flower bed when tons of work needs to be done on a house. The sub-contractors will not try to avoid the newly planted flowers. It is a nice start to a series.

Dead as a Door Knocked is a cute cozy mystery with great characters and well written. This is a new series and I can't wait to see how it goes.

If you’re looking for a cute cozy with a light mystery sprinkled on top, this is the book for you. It has a solid storyline with a dead body thrown in and a couple of twists that kept me guessing until the end.

Whitney is an aspiring real estate agent/mogul who is offered what she thinks is the deal of a lifetime - a great house in a nice neighborhood for well below market value that she and her cousin could update and flip easily. But as soon as the keys are in her hand, things start to go very wrong. When she and her cat, Sawdust, find a body buried in their flowerbed, she knows things are just going to keep getting worse until she can get some answers. And hopefully she can get them before the police put her in jail.

I want to start off by saying that I am not a cat person (#teamdog), but the chapters that show Sawdust’s point of view were cute. I really enjoyed them and they were creative. A++ for those.

I also liked the family storyline, with Whitney living in her parents’ pool house and working with her cousin. I don’t know it gave it a nice feel and made me want to be friends with them. I was kind of jealous that I don’t have a big family like that to lean back on when things get rough. It hit the perfect pitch.

The mystery was good too, not too intense, but with a couple of good twists ahead plenty of suspects to keep you guessing. I enjoyed Whitney’s sleuthing and thought the ending was put together well - nothing was too obvious and there were some good twists in there.

Overall, this is a sweet, light cozy mystery for anyone who likes the genre. Highly recommended.

Dead as a Door Knocker was a great start to a new cozy mystery series with an interesting mystery and a delightful cat.

Whitney Whitaker works as a property manager while she’s studying to take her real estate licensing exam. After she’s forced to evict three young men who trashed a rental property, the owner is frustrated and asks Whitney if she’d like to purchase the house for cheap. With her dream to eventually flip houses, Whitney sees this as the perfect opportunity for her first flip. But after she purchases the house, she encounters one problem after another with the property leading her to believe she got a bad deal. And after her cat Sawdust finds a body in the flower bed, her luck goes from bad to worse as the detective on the case is convinced she’s guilty. Determined to find the real killer, Whitney is in a race against the clock before she goes down for murder.

The main plot of this book of Whitney finding the body and being accused of murder doesn’t happen until a little ways into the book. At first the book centers on Whitney purchasing the house and beginning the renovations. The number of problems she runs into after she begins her renovations was staggering and I liked that she was quick to realize that the inspector she used was obviously not truthful as to the state of the house. Once the body is found, things quickly spiral out of control for Whitney. She is held for questioning and has very little recourse to prove her innocence when the circumstances of the death are revealed. I enjoyed her quest to find the killer as she’s great at finding connections and following up on them. I have to admit I was surprised by the killer’s identity but everything made perfect sense after the details were revealed.

Whitney is a fantastic main character and I found myself really enjoying her. Whitney lives in a pool house on her parent’s property while she’s saving up money for her eventual dream of flipping houses. She works as a property manager as well as doing carpentry work on the side in her family’s business. Whitney is great at both of her jobs and her skills as a carpenter definitely come in handy when renters want work done. Whitney has an adorable cat named Sawdust that accompanies her to the house she’s flipping and I enjoyed the hijinks he got into while there. Overall Sawdust was a delightful character and I enjoyed the small chapters we got from his point of view as they were quite fun. I loved his determination to conquer his fear of the robot vacuum Whitney owned.

Whitney is quite close with her family and a number of them appear throughout the story. The one who shows up the most is her cousin Buck who assisted her in buying the house and is helping her renovate it. I enjoyed their relationship as it was like that of siblings. Another big character is detective Collin Flynn, the man investigating the body found on Whitney’s property. Collin is new to his job, but he is quite good at it despite his suspicions that Whitney is the killer. He’s great at making connections and I appreciated his willingness to follow up on leads Whitney gave him.

Overall I really enjoyed Dead as a Door Knocker and I’m interested to see where the series goes in future books. I definitely recommend this book if you’re looking to get into cozies as it’s a light, easy read.

Dead as a Door Knocker is about Whitney and her cousin, Buck, who bought a house together with the goal of fixing it up to sell it. They have nothing but bad luck and things get worse when they start renovations and find a body..They attempt to solve the murder themselves and must navigate through many twists and turns. Likeable, good read, with detailed characters. Thank you to net galley for allowing me to review this book.

Dead as a Door Knocker: A House-Flipper Mystery
By Diane Kelly
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
2019

Review by Cynthia Chow

As she pursues her dream of becoming a licensed real estate agent, Whitney Whitaker lives her in parents’ pool house and works as a property manager for Home & Hearth Realty. Although it allows her to take on carpentry jobs for her uncle’s Whitaker Woodworking business, kicking out tenants also results in Whitney being harassed and stalked by a furious frat evictee. The chance to purchase at a bargain price the very house trashed by the former tenant gives Whitney her first opportunity to repair and house-flip an estate at an irresistible profit. A cosigned deal with her cousin Buck could give Whitney the start of a new career, but her prospects literally bursts into flames due to a shoddy electrical system and negligent home inspector.

Suspecting that she may have been duped by the seller, Whitney angrily accuses Rick Dunaway of bribing the inspector and attempting to scam her. Without admitting outright guilt, Dunaway agrees to pay off her insurance deductible and push along her insurance payment. Whitney does indeed receive a check from Dunaway, but it only makes her look guilty when she finds the real estate magnate half-buried in the garden, murdered by her own mallet. Fortunately for Whitney, Detective Collin Flynn may be newly promoted and leading his first homicide case, but he’s willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a woman who declares that she would never risk jail time and abandon a cat to be raised on his own. Still, Whitney and her best friend and chef Colette Chevalier decide to track down hard evidence to prove Whitney’s innocence while somehow successfully marketing a “murder house” to keep her financial future afloat.

Diane Kelly’s Paw Enforcement novels include chapters from the viewpoint of the canine K-9 officer Brigit, and here alternating chapters include the perspective from Whitney’s wood-colored feline Sawdust. Terrified by the monstrous Roomba that pops out daily to stalk him, Sawdust nevertheless proves to have more than enough valor to step up and protect his human when it counts. The humor that is so outstanding within the author’s Tara Holloway novels is more than prevalent here, highlighted with the relationships Whitney has with her friends and her brotherly cousins. Not only is Whitney a sparkling personality who must deal with becoming an internet murder meme, she is a talented professional able to complete home repairs as she studies for her real estate exam. Details about interior design and house-flipping enhance the novel without distracting from the main mystery plot, which is unpredictable yet still leads to a logical solution. This is a stellar start of a new mystery series, sure to please fans who love clever dialogue, an adorably protective cat, and a heroine finding her purpose and path in life. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

This book is the first in a new series, "Dead as a Door Knocker" (A House-Flipper Mystery). This book had most of the makings of a cozy mystery - animals, small-town, relationships, and obviously murder. This book was okay for a first, but there were some things that were lacking...

I was, actually, hoping to like this book more than I did. One thing that really through me in this book was that the protagonist's cat, Sawdust, had a few of his chapters that didn't really lend anything to the story; in fact I was wondering why they were included at all.

Another aspect that could have been better developed was the relationship between Detective Flynn/Whitney and Buck/Colette - in both cases there is seemingly more than meets the eye in the romance department, but it isn't addressed at all, that I can recall. It's just kind of hanging out there.

3 stars

Living 20 minutes east of Nashville, I had to try this series, and while it had a slow beginning for me, it did not disappoint very solid mystery.

This is the first mystery I read where you have to wait for a few chapters before the murder happens and I think this is why I felt it being slow, but during that time you get to know more about the characters so while I did enjoy it I was still waiting and waiting for the murder to happen. LOL


Things I really enjoyed, Sawdust personal chapters and yes, the cat has his own mini-chapters so cute, the story settings, characters and since I was never able to guess who done it, I will be on needles waiting for the next murder to happen in Nashville so I can see Whitney in action again.

In this first installment of the House Flipper Mysteries, Whitney Whitaker comes to the reader as a Property Manager for rentals who is getting ready to take the exam to become a full fledged realtor. Whitney is tasked to evict three college boys from a charming little cottage near the university. After she gets them out (while receiving threats of retribution), Whitney discovers that the house has been trashed severely. The owner happens by and seeing the damage, offer the house to her at a giant discount simply to eliminate further hassles for him. Whitney gathers all her savings, gets her cousin,Buck, to co-sign and they are set to refurbish and flip the house for a tidy profit. But wait. The first night the house catches on fire due to old knob and tube wiring which the inspector failed to note on his inspection sheet. Having escaped the fire, Whitney, then discovers a few days later the old owner dead in her garden. Could anything else go wrong? Now she's a murder suspect!

This was a great start for a new series and I particularly loved the chapters that were from the POV of Whitney's cat, Sawdust. Definitely generated laughter!

Princess Fuzzypants here: This is the first book of a new series and I, for one, am looking forward to more. Whitney is a very capable lady. She is a property manager cum carpenter whose skills at making right things that have gone wrong convinces her she might have a future as a property flipper. When her employers’ biggest client offers her a deal too good to be true, she jumps with the help of her cousin.
But as with many too good to be true deals, this one has a whole lot of problems. The house inspector has been bribed by the developer to fudge his report, neglecting to report many issues, the most egregious of which is knob and tube wiring.
Whitney and her trusty kitty Sawdust (whose point of view adds an endearing extra to the story) almost die when the house catches fire the first night after the deal is signed.. She learns there are a lot of shifty and sneaky things going on turning their sure-fire investment into a money pit doomed to lose money. Naturally, she is miffed to say the least but not enough to bludgeon the guy and then bury his body in her own flower bed where she finds him. The newly minted detective who is investigating, thinks she is a fine suspect and only grudgingly looks elsewhere once she digs up new information about the dealings of the deceased.
It’s a good story with wonderful characters, Sawdust the kitty being the best. I did suspect the real perp but not until well into the book. It was entertaining and highly satisfying.
Five purrs and two paws up.

I loved the idea of this book and I am a sucker for cozy mysteries and I adore books that feature home renovations so this book should have been a hit. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into it. I found the main character to be annoying and the chapters features the cats point of view seemed pointless to me. I normally don’t mind animal POV’s but this one just had no reason.

Dead as a Door Knocker by Diane Kelly is the debut novel in A House-Flipper Mystery series. Whitney Whitaker works for Home & Hearth Reality as a property manager and part-time for Whitaker Woodworking. She is also studying for her real estate license. Whitney is heading to a property owned by Rick Dunaway of Abbot & Dunaway Holdings, Ltd. to evict the current tenants. When Rick sees the damage done by the college students, he decides to sell the home and offers Whitney a great deal. Whitney and her cousin, Buck purchase the home together to renovate and flip it for a profit. The first night, a fire in the back bedroom sends Whitney and her cat, Sawdust fleeing from the house. The fire inspector quickly pinpoints the source of the fire as outdated knob-and-tube wiring which should have been caught by the inspector prior to purchase. Whitney has a feeling that is why she got such a good deal on the property and confronts Rick Dunaway. Whitney is working in the flower beds on Saturday when Sawdust starts playing with a finger sticking out of the dirt. Rick has been murdered and Detective Collin Flynn, newly promoted to the homicide division, believes Whitney is the killer. Whitney needs to dig up the killer before she ends up working in the prison carpentry shop. She has a feeling, though, that the property value on her investment just took a nosedive.

Dead as a Door Knocker takes readers to Nashville, Tennessee where Whitney Whitaker lives in the tiny guesthouse on her parent’s property with her adorable cat, Sawdust. She puts her business degree to work at managing properties for clients of Hearth & Home Reality and keeps her construction skills sharp working part-time for Whitaker Woodworking. Whitney is hoping to start selling real estate once she obtains her license. Whitney is a smart, interesting and spunky woman. When Rick Dunaway offers to sell a home to Whitney at a good price, she jumps at the chance. She knows it is a good investment, but Whitney cannot afford it on her own. Thus, enters her cousin, Buck Whitaker. Whitney should have known that Rick had an ulterior motive. When Rick turns up dead in the flower bed and Whitney is without an alibi, the new homicide detective believes he has a slam dunk case. But Whitney is not going down without a fight. I like how Whitney with the aid of Buck and her friend, Colette nose around for information. The mystery is multifaceted. There are a couple of potential suspects and good clues to help readers identify the guilty party. I enjoy Diane Kelly’s writing style. I was drawn into the story and I kept reading until I finished it. We get to know Whitney along with her family and her best friend. I am happy that the author took the time to establish our main character. I especially enjoyed the chapters written from Sawdust’s perspective. They are entertaining. I found myself laughing as Sawdust described the “demon” that zips around the floor (robot vacuum cleaner). Dead as a Door Knocker is a good start to A House Flipper Mystery series (4 out of 5 stars). Dead as a Door Knocker has relatable characters, home renovations, a caring family, good food, a dead body and an adorable cat.

This is the first book in. New series. I loved the setting of Nashville and Whitney is a interesting sleuth. I liked how the book flowed and their was so many twists and turns I couldn't figure out who the killer was. I look forward to future books in this series and recommend this book to mystery and people who love house renovation.