Hooking for Trouble by Betty Hechtman

Hooking for Trouble by Betty Hechtman ISBN-13: 9780425279458 Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: Nov. 1, 2016

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
The Tarzana Hookers’ Yarn University has been a big success, and the classes have drawn in a slew of new crochet devotees. A less welcome arrival is the boxy monstrosity in the yard behind Molly’s house. She hasn’t met her new neighbors, but when she sees a couple struggling on the balcony and later spies what looks like someone lying on the ground, Molly wastes no time calling in her ex, homicide detective Barry Greenberg.

To Molly’s shock, Barry reports that nothing is amiss with her neighbors and asks her to lay off with the amateur detecting. Molly knows she wasn’t just seeing things, but with no body to prove her case she’ll have to unravel the evidence on her own—because someone in Tarzana is tangled up in murder.


My Review:
Hooking for Trouble is a cozy mystery. It's the eleventh book in the series. You don't need to read the previous novels to understand this one, and this story didn't spoil the previous whodunits.

Molly sees a body in her neighbor's yard and calls the cops, but the body is gone by the time they arrive. No body, no murder. So Molly tries to figure out who was killed (which isn't as easy as it sounds), who did it, and why.

It's a clue-based mystery, and you can guess whodunit from the clues. However, a critical clue about "why" was described so vaguely that the reader has little chance of guessing the motive before Molly explains it. Molly wanted to catch whodunit in an incriminating action at the end, but she apparently gave little thought to video-taping it as proof or protecting herself if she was spotted by whodunit.

There were no sex scenes and no bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable mystery.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.