Tide and Punishment

Baker, Bree. Tide and Punishment. Scottsdale, Arizona: Poisoned Pen Press, 2019.

Everly Swan owns Sun, Sand, and Tea Cafe in Charm, North Carolina. When Aunt Fran discovers the mayor's corpse with one of her sister's garden gnome as the obvious weapon and picks it up, she becomes the chief suspect, particularly since she planned to seek his office and had arguments with him. Everly appears to have some sort of relationship with the investigator, but having not read earlier installments, I never quite figured that out. The setting is near Christmas, but there is not much of a Christmas feel to it. Everly puts her nose in places she should leave to official investigators, but they don't seem all that bothered by her efforts at amateur sleuthing in spite of a couple half-hearted warnings. I suspect my main problems with the book stem from not reading earlier installments. I found the book easy to put down. I received an advance review copy through NetGalley with the expectation of an honest review.