Brenda H. (booksinvt) - , reviewed on 8/22/2015 + 457 more book reviews

A Catered Murder is the first in the Simmons Sisters mystery series. Bernadette "Bernie" Simmons has recently returned to her hometown of Longely, NY after finding her boyfriend in bed with her best friend. Bernie joins her sister Libby in running their family store/bakery, A Little Taste of Heaven and helping to take care of their father Sean, a retired wheelchair bound ex Police Chief.

Libby and Bernie are hired to cater the Seventeenth Annual Clarington High School reunion. The most famous of the graduating class, Lionel Wrenkoski aka Laird Wrenn has become a well known vampire mystery writer. A bully in high school Laird isn't much better as an adult. When he takes center stage at the reunion to make a speech and suddenly drops dead from drinking a bottle of his own private water, it turns out that he still had a lot of enemies.

Libby's best friend Tiffany becomes the prime suspect. Libby begs Bernie to help her clear her friends name and together with tips from their Dad on how to conduct a proper police investigation they begin questioning the suspects on their list.

I had read a lot of the previous reviews for this book and was a little apprehensive about picking it up. I will agree that the dialogue is VERY difficult to follow in terms of who is speaking and I did find myself going back up the page to retrace the conversations several times. I actually enjoyed the plot, the relationship between the sisters and their Dad, and the little bit of romance that was thrown in. I'll attribute the dialogue problems to poor proofreading or editing and hope that the second in the series flows a little more smoothly.

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