Progressive Dinner Deadly

A Myrtle Clover Mystery, Book 3

By: Elizabeth Spann Craig

Narrated by: Lia Frederick

Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Retired octogenarian schoolteacher Myrtle Clover is fit to be tied when her book club votes to change to a supper club. Who wants chips and dip when they can have Dickens and Twain?

The first supper club is a progressive dinner... where Myrtle loses interest during the hors d'oeuvres. But when a body is discovered during the main course, the evening quickly gets interesting. Myrtle pits her sleuthing skills against her police chief son's to find the killer.... if the killer doesn't find her first.

©2011 Elizabeth Spann Craig (P)2013 Elizabeth Spann Craig

Clever, Cozy, Carolina Corpse & Covered Dish

What a delightful listen! Ms. Myrtle, retired eighty-something English teacher, with a yard full of garden gnomes . . . and a son named, Red, who happens to be the police chief of the small southern town . . . Well, she's trying her BEST to direct her wayward book club toward some classics, such as Dickens or Mark Twain . . . when WHAT should those totally uncultured, imbeciles come up with??? Well, a progressive dinner! That's what! Ridiculous . . . but it's a small town and Ms. Myrtle is voted down . . . so she goes along, even though she's a TERRIBLE cook . . . Great southern charm . . . a town full of busy bodies, in everyone's business . . . but with plenty of secrets . . . and a skillet full of surprises!

Laugh out loud cozy mystery!!

Eighty something, Myrtle Clover and her neighbor, Miles are back at it again. While scheming to upgrade the books in their book group to some serious classics, Myrtle's busy body neighbor jumps in and convinces the group to change to a progressive dinner club. First of all, Myrtle is a terrible cook, but she purchases deserts for her turn. But her turn never comes around. The main dish hostess is found murdered on her kitchen floor. Someone based her head in with a frying pan. Myrtle is, apparently, only one of a couple people who actually didn't have a grudge against the victim.

Once again, Myrtle competes with her police chief son, Red, to discover the murderer first. After all, she's added investigative reporter to her old age resume. Red tried to side track her into writing a "household hints" column, but shoot, with all the gossip around her small town, she just can't stop herself from listening --can she? Her new ferrel feline buddy is trying to help Myrtle too. He's teaching her how to "hunt" by bring different "catches" to her home, a sparrow and a chipmunk amongst other icky "food treasures".

This continues to be a fun series filled with many interesting characters. Myrtle's habit of filling her front and back yard with garden gnomes to annoy her son, is just one of the creative actions of our octogenarian heroine that causes me to break out in laughter throughout this book. Definitely a fun cozy with a great mystery plot.

Ms. Marple Wannabe

If you like listening to a lot of gossipy small town women then you'll like these mysteries. This one was a little better than the first one because of the antics of Ms. Clover's feral cat who had taken a shine to her and would bring her first presents and then other creatures to try to teach Ms. Clover on how to hunt.

Like the first one Ms. Clover goes around gathering gossip so she can figure out who the murderer is, trying to beat her son, the police chief, to the punch. You never hear exactly how she figured it out until she's explaining it to the police.

It's an easy listen and the narrator does a pretty good job.

80+ NC Slueth finds Death at the Book Club

When Myrtle, the 80+ year old amateur sleuth of NC, attempts to get her book club to read classics, it morphs to a deadly progressive dinner club. Fun, but pacing is erratic.

Better

Better than the first book. A funny tale about an elderly woman, a murder mystery, and the antics of a small town.

Liked it very much

This one had a lot of moving parts to work out. But Myrtle Clover worked in out in the end. It was a good read.

Keep Reading

You won't catch the killer unless you listen to the very end . Very suspenseful.

Dinner Party Gone Wrong

The second book in the Myrtle Clover Mysteries Series is even better than the first. With the same core characters but different secondary characters, we delve even deeper into the town of Bradley, North Carolina and see some of the darker aspects of such a small, tight-knit community. There are some things that you will never live down in a small town, and we explore the consequences of this in this second novel.

Jill Caulfield is an angel to the majority of those who know her. With a husband who doesn’t work and who drinks away all of his inheritance, Jill works two jobs and has a side hustle cleaning others houses to keep their family afloat. But when Jill is found dead in her kitchen by the book-club-turned-supper-club, things begin to be revealed. It becomes clear to Myrtle Clover that Jill wasn’t the saint that many people thought. And as she begins to dig into the case, she puts herself in danger once again to beat her police chief son to the answer of who murdered Jill Caulfield. Can Myrtle come out of this alive? Or is she digging herself into an early grave?

The new characters we’re introduced to in this book draw us even further into the town of Bradley. With the same perfect small-town vibe as before, now that the core cast of characters is established, we get to delve into the workings of the small town. Each new character adds more to the universe that Elizabeth Craig has created. And now Myrtle has a new furry friend, a feral cat that proves to be far more useful and entertaining than anybody would think.

If you enjoyed the first book, this second one will endear Myrtle and Miles to you even more. This is even better than the first, in my opinion. We get to see new faces with the familiar, and the mystery is even better. I guessed the murderer about 80% of the way through book one, but I was with Myrtle as she discovered the murderer in this book. And there’s more than even Myrtle thinks in this one. If you want a fascinating mystery in a cozy town teeming with secrets, this book is for you!

Retirement gives her more time for sleuthing!

Progressive Dinner Deadly is a cute cozy mystery featuring one of the spunkiest octogenarians! Myrtle Clover is blunt, she's funny, she can't cook, and she can solve a mystery faster than anyone in town, including her police chief son who lives across the street.

While I did find it to be a slow starter the last third really picked up. I was pretty much glued to my phone for the last couple of hours as Myrtle put the odd assortment of clues and neighborhood gossip together to solve whodunit. This was a fun introduction to the series for me, it's actually the second Myrtle Clover Mystery, and I expect that I'll be listening to more cozies from Elizabeth Spann Craig.

As far as audiobooks go it was a decent production. The narrator was quite good, so glad they didn't pick some who sounded like a teenager, and the sound quality was excellent. So, if you love cozy mysteries and heroines who are over 60 you might enjoy this audiobook and the series.

(I received a copy of this book from author/publisher. All opinions are entirely my own.)

Dinner with Death

A clean cozy mystery with an abundance of quirky characters. A woman thought to be admired turns out to be disliked by almost everyone and her seeming perfection turns out to have a dark side. When found dead in her kitchen there is no shortage of suspects. With humor woven into the story , and some false leads, it will keep you guessing until the last chapter. I received this audiobook at no cost from Audiobookworm for my honest review.

Wonderful book

I Enjoyed this audio book very much from start to finish great story line too

It's not murder she wrote but deadly cooks?

I read this book a while ago and remembered that I really enjoyed, so was pleased to see it had made its way on to audible. I jumped at the chance to see if I was right. Glad I did because my memory was right I did enjoy it, in fact I might just have to say I enjoyed it even more as an audio book. I love the characters and the way they interact with each other, especially the way Myrtle let's her son know he is in trouble by having gnomes facing his house, this leads to some laugh out loud actions between the characters and not just with mother and son. It's also fun that the amateur detective is elderly adding a new twist to the normal cozy mystery genre. The mystery is fun and with plenty of quirky suspects it keeps you guessing. This is definitely a series I will be looking into collecting for my audio book library.
Myrtle a retired school teacher is disappointed about the choice of reading material being read by her reading group and vowels to bring some classics into everyone's lives. Her plans go a rye when everybody mistakenly believes she is suggesting that they change the book club to a dinner club. Fearing the worse she has no choice but go along with the decision even if it means the end of her precious book club but not even she could have predicted how horribly wrong the event would go. As word of the dinner party spreads the evening doesn't start out well and Myrtle's friend Miles finds his house under siege with drunk guests and only one bathroom, fights break out but that doesn't explain why at the end of the night at the second from last house to be visited they find a dead body. Who could want the cleaner dead? As Myrtle investigates plenty of suspects turn up because little miss innocent wasn't quite as innocent as she appears. Just as Myrtle is wrapping up the case she stumbles over another body. This time it is the dead woman's husband. Was it suicide? Guilt over killing his wife ? Or is Myrtle's son right and she should give up her night time walks because she has made herself a target for s killer.by asking to many questions.
Liked the narrator and though she put her voice to good use creating lots of different sounding voices for each of the characters.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.