Old Town Antiques Mystery: Book 1
Publication Date: November 8, 2022
Art, murder, and a secret dating back centuries collide in Cordy Abbott’s delightful cozy mystery series debut, perfect for fans of Jane K. Cleland.
Roberto Fratelli, proprietor of the antiques store Waited4You, is the meanest man in Marthasville, Virginia. So when he puts the business up for sale, the other merchants in town are overjoyed. And now the business has a prospective buyer: local resident and the newly elected mayor’s mom, Camille Benson, who’s thrilled at the prospect of getting into the antiques business. During a celebration in honor of Camille’s new venture, her best friend, Opal, tells her about finding a letter, purportedly from Sally Fairfax to George Washington, dated 1756, hidden under a chair in the shop. When they return to retrieve the cache, they find Roberto’s lifeless body on the floor and no letter.
Police question Ella Coleman, Roberto’s ex-wife, and discover that her current husband supplied Roberto with oh-so-faux Victorian furniture. Did the two cheat the wrong customer? Or could the murder be connected to an earlier theft of rare books from the shop—a theft Roberto never reported?
As Camille prepares to confront these questions and investigate the murder, she knows she might become the latest knock-off.
I’m always on the hunt for new cozy mystery series to try, so when I came across Dead Men Don’t Decorate, I snatched up the book. It’s the first in the Old Towne Antique Mystery by a new-to-me author, Cordy Abbott.
The book follows Camille. She’s a 50-something teacher who is burnt out in her job and doesn’t want to return to school. When she finds out that the antique shop that her parents used to own is up for sale, she decides to take a chance and buy it. But when the former owner, the meanest man in Marthasville, ends up dead in her new shop, she can’t just stand by and wait for the police to solve the mystery.
I had a hard time getting into the story at first. There were a lot of character introductions and world setting that pulled it down a bit at the beginning of the story. It did pick up and got better, but there were moments where the story would get bogged down with history lessons that just seemed to be too much irrelevant information. It was a big information dump which, I believe, was intended to show that Camille was knowledgeable in antiques, but was, in the end, just overwhelming.
I mostly liked Camille. She’s relatable, but I saw little growth. Her “relationship” with her new landlord, who also looks to be the love interest, got off to a rocky start, and I really didn’t like how she handled it.
Her best friend, Opal, was a bit too outrageous for my tastes, and I’m hoping she calms down as the series progresses. There’s also her son, who happens to be the town’s new mayor, the city attorney, the police chief, and the detective to round out the main cast. Most characters still needed to be developed to get much of a read on where their characters will go during the series.
The plot was interesting, with several twists. It just got bogged down, as I mentioned earlier, with a lot of information that could have been pared down and been just as effective and less tedious. I figured out pieces of the mystery but not the complete motive.
Dead Men Don’t Decorate wasn’t a bad story, but it also wasn’t my favorite read of the year. It’s a solid first book in a series with good writing. It just suffered from information overload. I’ll try the next book in the series in hopes that it’s a little more focused and we can get more character development.
Proud baby boomer and dog mom, Cordy Abbott, is the author of the Old Town Antique Mystery series. She, her husband, and their Standard Schnauzer have lived in Alexandria, Virginia for over two decades. Because she enjoys everything about the city, she can’t wait to share it with readers, even a fictionalized version.
When not writing she enjoys traveling and volunteering for good causes, like American Association of University Women of Alexandria and the Delaware River and Bay Lighthouse Foundation.
She has a post-graduate certificate in Antiquities Theft and Art Crime.
