I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: December 2024] Mother-Daughter Murder Night

This was described as Gilmore Girls meets mystery novel.

And while I want to be clear that in no way was it Gilmore Girls related, it had a Gilmore Girls vibe.  Three generations of women living together (out of necessity) working together to solve a mystery.

The grandmother is Lana Rubicon (terrible name).  She has created a real estate empire.  I enjoy that she is a strong and powerful woman who had been pushed down but fought back and built her own fortune.  But she’s also cold and distant–especially to her daughter, Beth.

The plot moves on when Lana is diagnosed with cancer and has to move in with Beth and Beth’s daughter.

Like Gilmore Girls, Beth was impregnated when she was a teenager.  She decided to keep the baby and move out.  But she moved into a property that Lana owned in a waterfront community.

Lana thinks she’ll be back home pretty quickly but she winds up in worse shape and needs to be there for a a lot longer than she imagined.  Beth and Lana are quite antagonistic.  But Lana and Beth’s daughter Jack get along pretty well.

Lana loses her work connections and is pretty bored.  So she starts looking out the window with binoculars.  One night she sees someone dumping something into the water–but she can’t see any details.

Jack works as a guide in a kayak shop on the very water that Lana saw something dumped into.  And the next day she finds a dead body in the water.

The police come to the house and in a good cop/bad cop scenario, they accuse Jack of the murder.  Or not murder exactly, but negligence–was it one of Jack’s clients who fell off the kayak and drowned. It’s good that Lana’s a boss and doesn’t let Jack get pushed around.

Slowly Lana discovers that there are several characters who could be associated with the murder.  One of whom is a man whom Beth might consider dating.

Lana is an Emily Gilmore type–confident, bossy, funny and very sassy.  She’s a little different from Emily because she is sexy and not afraid to exploit that to her own advantage.  I loved the way she pushed men around and gave Jack good advice about being a strong woman.

I also enjoyed the way Lana kept putting herself into danger despite Beth’s annoyed pleas for her to lay low and be cool.

Jack uses her knowledge of the water (she’s been paddling on it since she was little and hopes to buy her own boat one day) to help eliminate certain possible explanations for the murder.

What was kind of interesting in this mystery was that Lana, being involved in real estate, is knowledgeable about land trust issues, which turns out to be essential to unpacking the mystery.

I really enjoyed the motive behind the murders–I feel like it was slowly developed but ultimately explained well.

The details of the investigation did get bogged down in unnecessary detail from time to time–I know a lot more about tides than I ever wanted to know.  And while mysteries are necessarily convoluted, this one felt a little too convoluted at times.

But overall I enjoyed the story, especially the banter between the women and the banter between Lana and the men she talks to.

I also enjoyed the supporting character of the female detective who is long suffering from her jerky partner and puts up with Lana’s butting in in true TV cop fashion.

i also really enjoyed the narration by Jane Oppenheimer.  She did a good job with the different voices and I think conveyed the various attitudes very well.