Tower District Mystery Series: Book 2
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
With her life on the California Coast behind her, Roxi Carlucci is beginning to feel at home in the Tower District-the cultural oasis of Fresno, CA-where she now lives with her cousin P.I. Stephen Carlucci, her pet rat Merlin, a Pit Bull named Watson, and a black cat named Dan. She has a new entertainment podcast, works as a part-time P.I., and is helping local bookstore owner Clark Halliwell put on the first-ever Tower Halloween Mysteryfest! The brutal summer heat is gone and has been replaced by the dense tule fog-perfect for Halloween!
She just wishes everyone would stop calling her the “Jessica Fletcher” of the Tower District simply because she found a dead body when she first arrived. But when one of the Mysteryfest authors is found dead, she fears she jinxed herself! The Carlucci’s are hired to find the killer before they strike again. Will Mysteryfest turn into a murder fest? How is the local gossip website back, and what does it know about the death of Roxi’s parents?
One of You by Lorie Lewis Ham is the second book in A Tower District Mystery series. While it can be read as a standalone book, it’s best as part of the series. There’s a lot of depth to the characters and the plot and many clues to help us solve whodunnit. Once again, there’s a murder the police are trying to solve along with cousins Stephen and Roxi, who are PIs.
This time, the story is set during Halloween, and a Mysteryfest Weekend brings all the characters and suspects together before and after the murder is committed. Tower Gossip tweets are active once again and always seem one step ahead of the clues piling up. But who’s behind the tweets since everyone thought the gossip was silenced when the last murder was solved? I enjoyed getting to know the characters better whom we’ve met before and visiting the various small businesses. Food and coffee once again play a part throughout.
There are twists and turns in the story, and it has a good flow. There are authors galore along with their books, secrets, and whereabouts questioned when the Queen of the Cozy Mystery is found dead before the events even get underway. Several other crimes are committed, but are they just to throw attention elsewhere? As we sift through the clues and the red herrings, will we figure out whodunnit before it’s too late?
Solving the crime brings closure, and the location is so apropos for the Halloween theme. But there are hints of what could be in the next book of the series, and I look forward to reading it.
One of You is a mystery that brings mystery writers and their books and secrets front and center. Grab that cup of coffee and keep turning the pages as the fog rolls in to figure out whodunnit!
Lorie Lewis Ham lives in Reedley, California and has been writing ever since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13, and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories, and poems throughout the years, as well as write for a local newspaper, and publish 7 mystery novels. For the past 14 years, Lorie has been the editor-in-chief and publisher of Kings River Life Magazine, and she produces Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, where you can hear an excerpt of her book One of Us, the first in a new series called The Tower District Mysteries. Book 2, One of You, will be out in June of 2024.
