Allison W. (sealady) reviewed on 8/30/2006 + 657 more book reviews

Reviewer: jadedromantic. "While waiting for Lemony Snicket's newest, I picked this up to read after coming upon it accidentally - I like to try "first in series" mysteries if I can, so that if I like them I can keep up from the beginning. Josie Toadfern lives in maybe the most rural Ohio town I've ever read about, Paradise. The book opens with several of Paradise's most prominent citizens scared stiff that Paradise has been left off the newest edition of the Ohio state map! The city's already low tourist-based cash crop is in peril, but how to get the city (literally) back on the map? Easy, says Josie, owner of Toadfern's Laundromat ("always a leap ahead of dirt!") and the best stain-removal expert in the midwest -- she'll just write to Tyra Grimes, who is a super-famous homemaking/decorating expert (a la Martha Stewart) with her own show, and tell Tyra she (Josie) should be on "The Tyra Grimes Home Show" to share her stain-fighting expertise with the world.

This idea comes with mostly-enthusiastic backing from other Paradisites -- with one of the most adamant exceptions being the local funeral parlor owner, Lewis Rothchild, who warns Josie that, if she gets Tyra to come to Paradise, "blood will flow." Josie receives a few other nay-sayers' advice, but writes the letter anyway ...

Sure enough, Tyra shows up in Paradise . . . and within 48 hours Josie stumbles upon a couple of bodies lying in a mushroom patch -- one unconscious, the other with a bullet hole in the chest...."

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