An interesting mystery but best of all a unique protagonist in David. He never intended to go home again but then he gets a call from his grandmother Maggie. She's got dementia, making her an unreliable narrator to be sure but there is a body-and David finds himself poking around for answers. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Nicely done.

After being gone for three years, David is returning to his hometown. He received a call from his grandmother, Maggie, babbling about a dead body, blood everywhere, and a lobster. Dementia / Alzheimer's is taking control of Maggie's mind.

Rushing to his grandmother's, she seems just fine. At first she doesn't remember making the call, then she says she called the police and they ignored her. She's prone to memories that aren't ... hallucinations .... and of course, memory loss.

David thinks Maggie has just had another pseudo-memory until he goes next door to check on her good friend and neighbor ..and finds her dead on the kitchen floor.

Who would have wanted to kill the elderly woman, who by all who knew her, was a sweet woman who would do anything to help them.

Did Maggie see the killer? Was she next door to see her friend on the floor?

Maggie's testimony is shrouded in doubt—in between moments of lucidity she talks about things that never happened, about apparitions, disappearances, and murders. But are they really only stories? After a man's death sets off a hauntingly familiar chain of events, it seems there's some truth to Maggie's words.

This has a well written plot, filled with intriguing characters amid the swirling mists of mystery, murder, and dark secrets. David is a unique character ... he left town as a woman and returned as a man. His historical based vocation makes him perfect for this story, as he records his grandmother and her friends about the past ... and the present. These are not your ordinary senior citizens ...they are funny, smart, and tough ... and they can take care of themselves ... and each other. There's plenty of action, plenty of suspects .. all leading to a surprising conclusion.

Many thanks to the author /Poisoned Pen Press / Netgalley for the digital copy of this small town mystery. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

This was a brilliant read. Beautifully set. Well written and really modern and in with the Times which was my favourite part and character in the book. Highly recommended xx

Very well developed characters and an extremely engaging story. Well thought out and very suspenseful story line that keeps the reader guessing until the final twist! This is the book to read this year! Highly recommended!

I’m delighted to be the first person to rate and review this book. Actually, I’m kind of surprised to be, it’s a thriller from a proper publisher, in fact a reworking of an earlier shorter work and it’s really good, with a nice cover even. I didn’t even expect it to be this good, hoped it would be, but you know how it is with trying new authors and thriller genre is way overpopulated now and all that. Plus it featured a trans protagonist and oftentimes such things can steal focus, but here it was actually done right. Which is to say it was an aspect of the narrative and an aspect of the protagonist, but not the entire thing nor even the main thing.
Because no one should be defined by any single thing about them, even if it’s an unusual or less conventional of a feature. So yes, David is a trans man, he left his small Rhode Island town as a woman and came back transitioned, a fact that some of the locals are dealing with easier than others. For the local sheriff who used to date David before, it’s all kinds of difficult. For David’s grandma Maggie it’s an on and off process, like most things, since her mind began to unravel. But her best lifelong friends, David’s aunts as he calls them, it’s totally fine, they are as accepting as can be. In fact, they are as golden as golden girls can be. Until one of them is found dead. Possibly murdered.
David would have come back anyway, having gotten fired from his teaching position on discrimination basis, but it’s the urgent call from his grandma that speeds up the process. Now he’s back as a caretaker and finds himself embroiled further and further in the investigation. And then the body count goes up. And winter surrounds the small peninsular insular community, like the grey waters of Narragansett bay. It’s a proper New England mystery in that way.
It’s a proper mystery is many ways, actually. There’s lots going on, plenty of players, variously entangled, both in past and present. In fact, some of the novel’s best stories are set in the past and recorded by David, whose historical based vocation makes him in a way a perfect detective to solve these crimes. And while the plot is excellently elaborate, what really sang for me were the characters, specifically the older ladies. David’s nice, Billy’s nice, but nice only goes so far. The ladies were fun, smart, tough, surprisingly able for their advanced years and very good at taking care of their own. No quiet retirement for them, they’ve been operating a local salvaging service for decades. Each of them a very different personality, but together they were the four musketeers of Narragansett bay…until they weren’t. So I very much enjoyed them as characters, especially Connie.
Mystery wise, the novel presented an excellent number of the prerequisite plot turns and twists, right up until a gutpuncher in the very end. There are even slight supernatural aspects to it or maybe ghosts are just too inextricable from the fabric of old New England.
Tone wise it varied, overall it’s fairly dramatic, it got pretty heavy at times, but then there were all these humorous times, mostly courtesy of Maggie’s dementia addled brain and there was even some romance thrown in. Something for everyone. And a great atmospheric location to frame it all. It almost would have been/might have been cozy what with the small town and grandmotherly characters, but it was definitely (fortunately) too dark for that. Plus technically not all ladies of a certain age are grandmotherly. Some are positively piratical in their bones. At any rate, I really enjoyed this book, from the story to the storytelling. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.