The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club

Boyer’s second Carolina Tales mystery (after Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island) is another charming cozy set in the sleepy beach town of Sullivan’s Island, S.C. At the outset, Sarabeth Boone has just thrown “the Titanic of all neighborhood parties” in hopes of mending multiple interpersonal rifts between her acquaintances, but the event quickly became so heated that the police arrested several guests. Hours later, a disappointed Sarabeth is awakened by a neighbor who reports that there’s a corpse in her front yard. Initially, Sarabeth assumes it’s a drunk stranger, but she eventually realizes that she knows the deceased, who was bludgeoned to death—possibly by one of Sarabeth’s own shovels. Flashbacks to five years earlier flesh out the events leading up to the murder, which Boyer resolves with aplomb. En route to the solution, she keeps readers in the dark about who died for far longer than the typical cozy, without sacrificing suspense. It adds up to a unique and satisfying whodunit. (Self-published)