cozy-mystery, family-dynamics, friendship, small-business, small-town, law-enforcement, murder-investigation, Maine

Despite coming to this long running series totally cold, that didn't leave me in the dust but spurred me into reading others in the series AFTER I read this one in a day. Liss finds out that her dad had a brother only after the man turned out to be the body in her Maine backyard. Oh, and he'd been declared dead/MIA before she was born. It's a good thing that she is a veteran sleuth, because her mother drags her down to Florida under protest to see just what the man has been doing all those years. Good snooping despite the Maine detective figuring her dad for the killer. Excellent read!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Kensington Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

I adore this series and I am always extremely excited to read a new book by the talented Kaitlyn Dunnett.
Liss is my favorite character, she’s strong, independent, smart and lovable, all things an excellent main character needs to be.
In A View to a Kilt, Liss is enjoying minding her store while her aunt is away. When a body shows up, Liss has no idea who the person is, but she finds off soon enough, sending the whole family into a downward spiral.
I was so engrossed in this story, I read the book in one sitting, only stopping when I was done.
I hope to see this series continuing for a long time.
I highly recommend A View to a Kilt.

When Liss and Dan find a dead body in their backyard, Liss sets to finding out why he was there and who killed him. The latest installment in the series, Dunnett keeps us guessing who the killer is until the very end. I enjoyed this book, often it seems like the author gets tired of writing and they begin to be repetitive, but not this one! We have some new twists to the book and Liss gets to butt heads with a new police detective!

Liss and her husband discover a body in their backyard. Liss's friend is no longer with the state police so Liss will now have to deal with someone new (and no surprise doesn't like her). The characters are interesting and I love the town of Moosetookalook. Liss and her mother are still trying to get their relationship on steadier ground. All in all a very good read.

Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

One morning Liss and Dan find a body in their back yard and are shocked to find out that it was Liss’ uncle who went MIA during the Vietnam war and was declared dead decades before. How could this be? How could Charlie MacCrimmon let his family grieve for their loss? Why show up all these years later and not make contact with his family? So many questions, so few answers.

When Liss and Vi go to Florida to learn more bout Charlie, Liss discovers a secret hiding place where her uncle has stored document related to a company that is trying to do business with Moosetookalook. Apparently Charlie uncovered the truth behind the company and was there to help save his beloved hometown from being then next victim of the unscrupulous company. Was Charlie silenced before he could share the information and where is the proof that is needed to get the council to vote against the proposal?

With so many questions, Liss can’t help but try to find a few answers, though he vows to leave the solving of the murder to the police. The murderer seems to have it out for Liss, hopefully the police will get the murderer before Liss becomes the next victim.

Another great entry in a long running series! You don’t get a series this established and long standing without having a talented author with well developed characters and solid mysteries. Well done!

Apparently this series isn't for everyone, though reading the earlier books fills in some of the questions in other reviews such as the Scottish bit considering Liss was one a dancer touring with that Scottish Dance company. I find the small town setting charming, even with the lack of technology as it reminds me of where my grandfather grew up. I enjoyed the chance to learn more about Liss' family. To each their own I guess.

Review: Book provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

If “fiction is life with all the boring bits left out”, then this book has boring bits in spades. After a great hook (man found dead in the backyard), the plot fizzles out rapidly. The small-town atmosphere in A View to a Kilt hinders the novel far more than it helps. The name of the village alone (Moosetookalook, really?) stopped me from taking it too seriously. The first three chapters could’ve used tightening and infodumping is rife, much of it told through dialogue. The book opens, for example, with a blow-by-blow description of a town meeting; good for those who live and breathe bureaucracy, maybe, but not for your average reader. The entire second third of the book consisted of Liss marching in like a bull in a china shop and interrogating various townspeople about how well they knew the victim thirty years ago and what he was like. It’s all rather repetitive and dull, because she doesn’t gain much new information. I never got a good impression of Liss’ actual relationship with most of them, except for Moose. There are far too many background characters introduced, such as Clementine, who add little to the story and just take up page time.

What compels Liss to act the amateur policewoman, and why can’t the actual police officer assigned to the case do it? She barely plays a role and is hostile for no other reason than to be hostile.

In fact, the book could have started at the funeral and it would have been a shorter read. That was one of my problems with this book - it felt like it should have started far later.

If the story had been primarily about Liss trying to dig up dirt on the selectmen for some reason, it would have been a bit more believable that, say, Thea was sleeping with one of the thugs and therefore didn’t bother doing her due diligence on the company. As it is, it comes out of nowhere, *especially* because, as is lampshaded in the book, she’s so thorough elsewhere. The book could’ve been about ferreting out and verifying the townspeople’s secrets, then, rather than who dated the victim in high school. Liss’ mother Vi could’ve had an important part to play in trying to win over some of the townspeople to give up their secrets about Thea when the police couldn’t, and that might have helped to develop the mother-daughter relationship.

It would’ve worked better, I think, if the victim hadn’t been found in the MC’s backyard, because there is no way the police would realistically allow someone to go around poking their nose in in such an amateurish way.

And, too, it seems this book can’t decide what it wants to be. For a book set in modern times, the only mentions of tech are phones, a laptop and a USB. Instead of all the face-to-face meetings of the Small Business Association, why aren’t the groups virtual?

There is also a random appearance and a few threats from two toughs - not only do they happen to be at the cafe at the exact time Liss is there, they come and sit next to her and threaten her in broad daylight, in front of eavesdropping witnesses. And then the ending itself has a Super Sekrit Agent dropping in just to confirm that yes, he’s the one who’s been following Liss and her mother around, and the CIA haven’t reported the victim missing because he’s part of some undisclosed Sekrit Guvmint Bizness (TM). There should be a Cops are Useless trope, because this is the second crime fiction book I’ve read where the cops do sweet FA.

We hear a lot of “He’d uncovered rah rah” at second and third hand, which makes for dull reading. Great, the company’s corrupt, whoop de doo. Now, if she’d been an employee at the company and found this out, it might’ve worked, but reading your dead uncle’s memos does nothing to make me care. I would’ve liked a more organic start, a scene set in the shop, perhaps her overhearing gossip about how Thea was sleeping with the thug through small-town gossip and becoming interested in the case that way, a bit like Miss Marple, rather than being a member of the town committee and making a nuisance of herself by quizzing all her uncle’s old friends.

All our intrepid main character manages to achieve is finding the USB, but it isn’t encrypted (Because Reasons), so they hack into it in minutes. Then Murch the lawyer goes and digs up some dirt on the rest of it and it’s all wrapped up. So basically, she’s not only an amateur, but a spectacularly incompetent one by all accounts. She freaks out and rings her sheriff mate at every opportunity. All this pussyfooting around does is make the lampshading ring true because she shouldn’t be solving a case instead of the cops! Phryne Fisher this isn’t.

“Liss supposed that was true, but if Thea, Farley, and Ranger expected to be reelected, they had to give some consideration to opinions voiced at this hearing. As soon as Thea stepped back, Liss stood up, forcing John Farley to recognize her. No matter how much anyone wanted her to remain silent, she had a right to speak. Had anyone tried to deny her a voice in the proceedings, her neighbors would have been up in arms.”

Really? It’s not because she’s the main character?

People just seem to listen to her at the second town meeting for no reason, not because she actually brings anything to the table in terms of personality, authority, charisma, personal stakes or interrogative power. How much more powerful if she’d been a farmer and this had been about a drought, for instance. Instead we get the town springwater, which Liss has zero personal investment in. I understand the Charlie angle, I just feel the motivation didn’t come through for me. I didn’t feel like Liss caring as strongly as she did really made sense under the circumstances.

This woman supposedly owns a business, but she isn’t involved in it at all and she doesn’t appear to have any sort of social life. All she does is make to-do lists about who to interrogate. Why bother with the business owner gimmick, then? Why not just make her a housewife? The town didn’t feel real to me either - it was just sort of... there. There were none of Liss’ memories attached to the actual town, just endless reminiscences of Charlie from carbon-copy characters.

What’s more, the author appears to have something of a fetish for Scotland: there are Scottie dogs, a business called The Scottish Emporium, a Scottish Highland dancing company, a Scottish funeral, someone wearing a tartan kilt and of course the main character’s Scottish ancestry. Of modern Scotland itself, however, there is no mention apart from name-dropping.

What I liked: Water is an unusual but vital motivation for a criminal to cover up a crime. Insider trading, as it were. I liked the premise, but it just wasn’t immediate or interesting enough for me. It could’ve been a good white-collar mystery. The action did pick up toward the end, but it wasn’t enough to save the book.