When Mikki inherited a farm nearby it was unexpected. Especially with strings attached of finding some old diaries and getting them printed. As an editor she has ways, but needs to find them first. Finding out a murder had happened at the farm in the 1950s, I was expecting a ghost or two, but that didn't happen. Hard to find clues when it happened so long ago, but she pieces the parts together and does eventually solve what happened. Enjoyed this one, and look forward to reading more with this character. Highly recommend.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. I was able to find the audio version through my local library.
The story was okay. I think it could have been cut in half. The story dragged on for way to long in my opinion. The mystery part was not really anything special.
If I had a crazy stalker coming up on my porch and looking through windows and sleeping on my porch I tell you what I would have had her arrested.

I apprecitate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this a really interesting read and the characters are quite engaging. it kept me reading until the end. I highly recommend.

Murder, She Edited

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

Mikki Lincoln is a character I can immediately identify with. She has retired from teaching but is earning extra money as a freelance editor. She is good at identifying punctuation and grammar errors and feels a compulsion to correct them. When running out on an errand she trades her “lightweight sweatpants and somewhat ratty T-shirt for jeans and a clean T-shirt with no holes.” Sounds good to me!

The cozy mystery opens with Mikki receiving a letter from a law firm informing her that she has inherited land from an almost forgotten friend of her deceased mother. There is an odd stipulation that to receive the inheritance she must locate some diaries in the farmhouse, edit them, post them on the Internet, and produce an e-book with them—all in a short amount of time. Finding the diaries is a difficult and eventually dangerous task.

I like Mikki. In spite of beginning her marriage in a time when a woman could not get a mortgage or other credit in her own name, she is a strong, independent woman. She is very intelligent, and she approaches this challenge with the same tenacity as a dog with a bone. The puzzle of where the diaries are and who wrote them leads to a potential cold case of murder and the uncovering of secrets from the past and present. Someone was willing to kill to prevent their discovery. Mikki has several concerned friends who help and protect her, and she achieves the grudging respect of the law authorities.

There is also a subplot about a steamy romance author who was a teaching colleague of Mikki’s. She wrote under an assumed name. A fan of this author wants to meet her and wants Mikki to make it happen. This addition to the story provides a little comic relief and distraction from the intensity of the main plot.

I liked Murder, She Edited from start to finish. A cozy with the main character in her early 70’s appeals to me, and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Mystery

Notes: #4 in the Deadly Edits Series, but can easily be read as a standalone. I missed one of the books in the series, but it did not hamper my enjoyment of the others.

Publication: July 27, 2021—Kensington

Memorable Lines:

I bestowed what I call my “sweet but dithery little old lady smile” on him, the one I usually save for security officers at the airport and policemen who think I’m meddling where I shouldn’t.

I wondered what would happen if I didn’t correct all those silly errors. Would the Friends of the Library vote to replace me as editor? I doubted it. No one else wanted the job. Besides, I didn’t think I had it in me to spot a grammar, punctuation, or usage error and not fix it.

Ordinarily, I don’t like to badger people, but I was fed up with the runaround I’d been getting. I leveled my best former teacher’s glare at the young woman and waited for her to cave. She burst into tears.

I received a free epub copy from NetGalley.

As the hesitant new owner of a rundown property outside of sleepy Lenape Hollow, New York, freelance editor Mikki Lincoln must get her facts straight about an old murder on the premises--before the killer returns to meet the next deadline!

Mikki was an excellent main character who I sometimes forgot was in her 70s. The story flowed well and kept me intrigued. I felt like the age of the main character was used and forgotten as it suited the plot. The twists were there but not totally unexpected which made it an enjoyable read.

Murder, She Edited is the 4th book in the Deadly Edits cozy mystery series by Kaitlyn Dunnett. Released 27th July 2021 by Kensington, it's 288 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a small town cozy series which has really found its stride and is always fun to revisit. Protagonist Mikki is a retiree, part time freelance editor, and full time amateur sleuth. I like it very much that she's authentic as she is; she uses hearing aids, her joints plague her sometimes, and she has the same realities as the rest of us. Despite a sometimes-uncooperative physical body, she's very much in love, she's romantic, she's intelligent, and she's whimsical. I also like it that the author hasn't played into the cynical snarky irascible old lady trope, and I for one am thankful.

This whole series has been a fun and diverting read. There is a fair bit of peripheral editing and writing information woven into the narrative and the ensemble cast of returning characters are mostly appealingly quirky and fun. The small town politics and interactions provide a lot of color and atmosphere. The author also weaves mentions of other series and authors into the story and I found some good suggestions for series which were previously unknown to me. (I really like it when books lead me to other books).
The language is clean, the murder is off-scene, there's no sexual content, and this is a light cozy in a consistent series. There is enough back story interwoven into this one that it does work well enough as a standalone although plot elements written in here as backstory will spoil the previous books if read out of order. I have enjoyed the rest of the series, so it is probably worth picking up the earlier books.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Murder, She Edited by Kaitlyn Dunnett is the fourth installment of the cozy Deadly Edits mystery series. As with most cozy mysteries each book of the series does contains it’s own mystery that is solved within so each can be read as a standalone or in any order if choosing to do so. There is however character development that carries over from book to book for those reading from the beginning.

In the first book of the Deadly Edits series readers were introduced to the main character of this series, Mikki Lincoln, who was in her sixties and starting over in her life after her husband’s passing. Mikki and her husband had lived in a remote area taking care of their land themselves for years but after losing her husband Mikki felt it was time to find an easier place to spend her retirement years so when she caught an ad for her childhood home in the Catskills she bought it sight unseen.

When Mikki found her new home needed more work than she expected she decided she would start up a side business to help with her finances. Since the move Mikki has been working as a freelance editor and settling into her new life making some new and seeing old friends. Now Mikki has gotten news that she will inherit a farm from an old friend if she does an editing job on some old diaries hidden on the property. Mikki soon finds news of an old murder that happened on the farm and does her best to discover what happened.

The Deadly Edits mystery series is another that I have followed from the beginning and always enjoy each new installment. I love that the main character is an older retired lady with a bit of spunk and of course this falls into my humorous and quirky style that I enjoy the most. Always fun to chase down a mystery with a huge grin on my face along with the characters!

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Michelle “Mikki” Lincoln has taken on a post-retirement career as a freelance editor and her life is clicking along nicely when she finds out she’s inherited a local, long-abandoned farm from a woman she hasn’t seen in decades who was a friend of Mikki’s mother. There’s one condition – Mikki must find some missing diaries, then edit and publish them. If she doesn’t, she forfeits the inheritance.

This captures Mikki’s interest and she sets out to find out to find the diaries, which is not an easy task in a house that’s been standing empty for decades. There’s plenty to discover, including one and possibly two murders and who committed them. More recently, it also appears someone has been using the abandoned property for criminal activity. Will Mikki find the diaries, solve the mysteries and get out alive?

Mikki is an interesting protagonist -- a retired widow who is less fit and flexible now, and it’s inspiring to see an older lead competently deal with the extra physical challenges she faces. The author does continuously remind us of Mikki’s age, though.

The author has created an appealing character in Mikki and the secondary characters add to the richness of Murder, She Edited. The story did, however, seem to drag in places and I did find myself skimming some of the long descriptions without losing any of the plot.

In Kaitlyn Dunnett's Murder, She Edited, the 4th installment in the Deadly Edits cozy mystery series, this newest caper leaves you hooked and enthralled with one juicy tale. Michelle Lincoln is a 70-year-old freelance editor and beta reader to a famous historical romance writer. It all started for her when she received a phone call from a lawyer saying she inherited a farm from one of her mother's closest friends Tessa Swarthout in her will upon her death. And that it had a very special request: to find them and edit the journals before publication. This send her on a wild goose chase while she looked for the diaries and read the disturbing details on how Tessa's stepmother Rosanna had died 50 years ago. While she worked on her library's newsletter, she dealt with a stalking number one fan of Illyana Dubonnet who requested to speak to herself and filed an editorial complaint, and the runaround from Leland Fairweather's law firm to get answers. As she tried to dodged this fan, she unearthed new clues when she found one diary and dug deeper. The closer she'd gotten closer to the truth, her life became endangered when she had a deadline to fulfill before time ran out of her on who really committed the crime way back when.

This was a really fun, cozy mystery type read.

I liked that our protagonist is an older woman which we don't see that often.

I felt it was a little too long (big surprise) and found I was skimming a lot and still understood where the story was.

However, it's definitely an easy read & it is fun. I really enjoyed the search for the diaries and the cold case element.

I gave this 3 stars⭐

Thank you to Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kensington Books & NetGalley for an eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Princess Fuzzypants here: When Mikki learns she is going to inherit an abandoned farm and property, she is perplexed. Other than her late mother being a friend of the deceased, she cannot understand why she was chosen. Upon learning the conditions she must meet to inherit, she is really confused. Teresa, who left her the bequest, set a quest that has to be accomplished by a certain time or the property would go to the next in line. She must find, edit and publish diaries that were hidden somewhere on the property. It is a gargantuan task made harder by the recalcitrant lawyers who are supposed to be representing the Estate.

She is left to her own devices without any information or assistance, even when she tries to learn more about the things that might help her in her search. It is almost as if they do not want her to succeed. But Mikki’s devices are substantial. With the help of her cat, Calpurnia, her cousin and his cop girlfriend, her own friends and a police detective, she is able to sort through the cobwebs and not only find the diaries and fulfill the challenge but in doing so she solves several crimes including a fifty year old murder. Pretty awesome for a septuagenarian.

She does find herself in peril, not only from the villains but from a super-fan of one of her friends who writes bestsellers. With age comes wisdom. She never intentionally puts herself in danger and when she finds she is, she uses all her intelligence and knowledge for self preservation. I admire her. The book is a fast paced page turner and highly entertaining. Five purrs and two paws up.

Mikki Lincoln is a freelance editor. When a kooky fan accuses Mikki of overlooking errors in her favorite author’s latest book, no explanation will calm her outrage.

Meanwhile, Mikki inherits a nearby farm from a woman she knew from childhood. It comes as a complete surprise. The attorney seems nice enough, but he also blocks her questions instead of answering. There is a condition to the inheritance—she must find, transcribe, and publish any and all diaries found on the property, no clue as to how many there are or where they can be found.

After a few trips to the farm for fruitless searches, Mikki’s getting discouraged. There’s a deadline and she has no idea where to look. The crazed fan is getting on Mikki’s last nerve, popping up at her house, only to yell again. Mikki decides to stay at the farm so she can look without interruption and in peace and quiet.

She does manage to get away from the book fan, but peace and quiet are hard to come by. The barn looks like it was reinforced inside and storage units were hastily removed. Creepier yet, there was a murder in the house many years ago and it remains unsolved. The daughters of the house moved out, not taking a single possession with them.

With only her cat for company, Mikki searches for clues, hoping to solve the old mystery as well as find the diaries. Will she be able to find them before the deadline and before someone thinks everything would be better if Mikki’s life reached its deadline?

This is book four in the series. It’s refreshing to read about an older woman, self-employed, working from home, who still manages to get involved in mysterious circumstances, through no fault of her own. It’s a series I always look forward to reading. In addition, Dunnett writes the Liss MacCrimmon series, thirteen books so far. Liss was a professional Scottish dancer until sidelined with an injury. Now she helps her aunt run the Scottish emporium. Another great series with authentic touches of Scotland. Plus there are Scottish terriers!

This is the 4th book in a series that's quickly becoming a go to series for me. I love Mikki Lincoln! It's highly enjoyable for me to have an older protagonist. Particularly one of smart and feisty as Mikki. The book is well written and I loved it being a cold case all wrapped up in a new case.

I do like the mature mystery solver aspect of this series. I also like how feisty Mikki is, so please do not try and compare her to Jessica Fletcher, she is a sleuth like no other. Very good storyline, easy to follow and keeps you turning the pages, even if you are not a slightly over-the-top fan girl. The murder was in the past but the danger is in the present. Nice plot development and some most excellent grammar tips!

This is the second book in this new series. Our intrepid heroine is left an inheritance in the form of an old farmhouse on the condition she publish old diaries. What she doesn’t know is the location of the diaries or what they contain or who even wrote them. I don’t know that anyone besides the cleaning service wouldn’t have been in the house for over 50 years. It was a good book and mystery.


Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Although it can be read as a standalone, this is the fourth book in the series. This is a cozy mystery with an unexpectedly complicated plot that is centered around the characters trying to solve the mystery. The main character is Mikki Lincoln, a retiree who now earns extra money by editing books. When she inherits a ramshackle property nearby, she is surprised, but especially because she doesn’t get the house unless she locates the diaries of the former owner, edits them and publishes them. That seemed like a lot to ask for an inheritance of a rundown old mansion, but since Mikki and her co-investigators love a good mystery, they accept the challenge. The search for the diaries involves the readers as the clues have to be followed and attention to details is an absolute necessity. Once Mikki finds out that there is a cold case murder to solve, she is all in and so was I. The novel was fun to read although at times, the plot seemed to jump around some, almost like Mikki’s mind as she pondered the location of the diaries and who the killer could possibly be. This was not my favorite book in the series because it seemed disjointed at times, but it did all tie together nicely at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed the character studies, especially the fleshing out of Mikki and her quest for what seems an impossible goal. There was a great deal of plot and time dedicated to looking for the diaries and a lot of introspection on the part of Mikki as to whether the whole inheritance was even worth the bother or not. I enjoyed the book, but it was tedious at times to try to make sense of what was going on in this complicated plot.
Disclaimer
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

Murder, She Edited
by Kaitlyn Dunnett
Pub Date 27 Jul 2021 |
Kensington Books, Kensington
Mystery & Thrillers



I am reviewing a copy of Murder, She Edited through Kensington Books and NetGalley:



Mikki inherits a nearby farm from a woman she hasn't seen in two decades, but the unexpected arrangement comes with a catch forgotten diaries hidden in the neglected house must be recovered, edited, and published across the internet within one month. The diaries are a time capsule from the 1950’s and it was left behind for good reason.





While Mikki searching for the mysterious memoirs and clues about the former owners. It isn’t long before Mikki discovers that the once peaceful place was punctuated by an unsolved homicide and other rumored crimes. Even currently suspicious activity in the creepy, dilapidated barn suggests it really hasn't been abandoned at all.







Mikki must crack this eeerie cold case In a remote farmhouse with only her observant calico cat, Calpurnia, keeping her company. She must quickly crack this eerie cold case from the past and stop a clever culprit from leaving red markups on anything other than pages of revised copy.




I give Murder, She Edited five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

Mikki Lincoln inherits a nearby farm from a woman she hasn't seen in two decades, who was a friend of her mothers. There is a catch to the inheritance, she must find missing diaries somewhere in the house, edit them and publisher them on several specific internet sites, all within one month. Right from the start, Mikki did not have a good feeling and began by firing the security company that was supposed to be watching the property and hiring someone she knew and trusted. She finds out that there is an unsolved mystery in the house's past and someone seems to be storing things in the barn. She has a lot on her plate in this outing in the Deadly Edits series.

The murder in the book was an old cold case that had gone unsolved for years, but when Mikki sets her mind on something, and with the help of two sets of diaries that she finds, she is able to puzzle out what happened so many years ago. But, that is not the only mystery. Someone is storing things in her barn and when she stumbles upon some containers, someone tries to burn down the barn and the house with Mikki inside. I think I liked this outing the best so far. This story really centered on Mikki and her ability to deduce things. There is some police intervention, thanks goodness, but Mikki pretty much solves this one on her own.

This is book 4 in the Deadly Edits series and can be read as a stand alone. 70 year old Mikki inherits a farm from her mother's friend on the condition she publish a book written from a box of old diaries. Someone doesn't want the diaries found let alone made public. A good cozy with a wonderful lead character. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This mystery involves a senior woman. All the language choices fit. The mystery is a cold case. I don't have anything against the main character but the story moves like molasses. I stopped caring about the outcome of the story. This series will appeal to some but I don’t think it’s within my interest range within cozy mysteries.