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Unabridged Digital Audiobook
Runtime: 7 hours, 40 minutes
Read by Susan Boyce
Some people just seem to be magnets for trouble; wherever they go, chaos and danger follow. And in Egg Shooters, the ninth Cackleberry Club Mystery by author Laura Childs, it seems that the characters not only attract chaos in their small town; they cause plenty of it, too.
The story finds itself in the middle of a murder mystery with café owner Suzanne Dietz and her friends at the Cackleberry Club. While Suzanne is visiting her fiancé, Dr. Sam Hazelet, at the hospital, a masked man races through the emergency room after robbing the hospital’s pharmacy, shooting two people as he makes his escape. The small town of Kindred is shocked that there’s an armed gunman on the loose, and while the sheriff digs for clues, friends and neighbors come to Suzanne to ask her to find the killer.
As is often the case in cozy mysteries, the people of Kindred rely on Suzanne to investigate on their behalf—no matter how dangerous things can (and do) get. But, as it turns out, the town’s sheriff is almost entirely incompetent, and he seems to need all the help he can get from Suzanne. He’s definitely stumped this time around, and he takes all kinds of wrong turns while Suzanne and her friends jump to conclusions about the killer’s identity.
Really, the greatest mystery here is how Suzanne and her friends haven’t gotten themselves killed during their ill-advised investigations. Admittedly, the characters in cozy mysteries do tend to put themselves in harm’s way—but Suzanne and her friend, Toni, race headlong into some seriously dangerous situations. They’ll decide that they need to investigate a camp full of what they’re told are “survivalists” or explore a warehouse where Toni’s estranged husband was recently beaten up—and they’ll race out late at night, apparently under the impression that they’re invincible. As you might guess, that never goes as expected.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the story, though, is the characters’ blatant prejudices. They’re convinced that the culprit must be some kind of outsider—like the “druggies” who have moved into the neighboring church through their rehabilitation program. And they’re positively mortified when it’s suggested that the killer could be one of the town’s “good church-going folk.” And many readers will find it all a little too folksy and close-minded.
Egg Shooters is definitely a small-town mystery filled with small-town characters. While the Cackleberry Club sounds like a great café with tasty offerings on the menu, the story itself is less palatable.
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