A Date with Murder by Donald Bain & Jon Land

A Date with Murder by Donald Bain & Jon Land ISBN-13: 9780451489272 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: May 1, 2018

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, my take:
Jessica Fletcher's friend Barbara "Babs" Wirth and her husband, Hal Wirth, host a Labor Day party at their home in Cabot Cove, Maine. Hal is found dead at the party. Officially, he died from a massive heart attack, but something doesn't seem quite right to Jessica Fletcher. Especially when his ex-business partner is also found dead in Cabot Cove. Jessica finds an unpublished memoir that Hal was working on and is shocked to discover that he'd tried dating on the sly with an online dating service. After one date, though, he changes his mind...but it was too late as that date eventually led to deadly consequences.

My Review:
A Date with Murder is a more of a thriller than a cozy mystery. Someone tried to kill Jessica Fletcher multiple times as she investigated. She had no proof beyond a gut feeling, so she asked a young man to hack into websites to get information and did things like set herself up as bait to try to solve whodunit.

Ironically, I guessed whodunit even before the body was found and that did turn out to be the person behind the whole, complex crime. While the crime and characters were interesting enough to hold my interest, I rolled my eyes at the end when Jessica, knowing the cops were there to arrest someone and thinking she spotted that person, left safety to follow that person. After solving hundreds of murders, you'd think she'd know better.

This is the forty-seventh book in the series. You don't have to read the previous novels to understand this one, and this one doesn't spoil the whodunit of previous novels. There was no sex. There was a minor amount of bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting 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.


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