Easter Bunny Murder by Leslie Meier #Giveaway!

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Kensington (January 29, 2013)

ISBN-10: 0758229356

ISBN-13: 978-0758229359

Spring has sprung in Tinker’s Cove, and Lucy Stone has a mile-long to-do list. From painting eggs with her grandson, to preparing the perfect Easter feast, to reviving her garden after a long, cold winter, she hardly has time to search for a killer with a deadly case of spring fever...

Lucy has always loved covering the annual Easter egg hunt for the Pennysaver. Hosted by elderly socialite Vivian Van Vorst at Pine Point, her luxurious oceanfront estate, it’s a swanky event where the grown-ups sip cocktails while their children search for eggs that are as likely to contain savings bonds as they are jelly beans. But when Lucy arrives with her three-year-old grandson, VV’s normally welcoming gates are locked, and a man dressed as the Easter Bunny emerges only to drop dead moments later…

Lucy discovers that the victim is Van Vorst Duff, VV’s grandson, and soon learns that not all is as it seems at idyllic Pine Point, where the champagne and caviar seem to be running dry. Always a social butterfly, VV has been skipping lunch dates with friends, and her much-needed donations to local charities have stopped with no explanation. Maybe she’s going senile, or maybe her heirs are getting a little too anxious to take over her estate…

As Lucy gathers a basketful of suspects, she’s convinced that someone’s been hunting for a lot more than eggs. And she’ll have to chase the truth down a rabbit hole before the killer claims another victim…

My Take:

It's the annual Easter egg hunt at Tinker's Cove, Maine and Lucy Stone is excited to take her Grandson this year. Every year she looks forward to covering this event as a writer for the Pennysaver newspaper. However, upon their arrival at the lavish Vivian Van Vorst's estate, they find the gate locked.

They all immediately notice VV's grandson and heir, Duff dressed in his bunny costume coming towards the entrance when he suddenly collapses and ends up dying on the way to the hospital. Lucy takes notice that his obituary isn't up to par. After-all, he is of high society and it's a lame write-up in the local paper. She enlists the help of her friend Sue to help out at the mansion for the funeral service and buffet. This gives her access to the estate and she is off to hopefully find some clues.

With the help of others in the community and an outside PI from New York, Lucy quickly notices that everything wasn't as it had seemed, even to her. Her friend, VV has been acting differently, becoming a recluse when normally she was an active, spirited woman always front and center. With a killer on the loose, will Duff be the only victim?

Family drama, scrambling for a piece of the fortune, and a jury trial is this good, clean mystery complete with "small town" characters that you could easily find yourself visiting with. The Easter traditions that Lucy and her family share makes for a wonderful read. You will even find a few recipes and Easter Egg Hunt tips in the back!


About the Author, Leslie Meier..

I started writing in the late ‘80s when I was attending graduate classes at Bridgewater State College. I wanted to become certified to teach high school English and one of the required courses was Writing and the Teaching of Writing. My professor suggested that one of the papers I wrote for that course was good enough to be published and I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories. I got $100 for the story and I’ve been writing ever since. The teaching, however, didn’t work out.

My books draw heavily on my experience as a mother of three and my work as a reporter for various weekly newspapers on Cape Cod. My heroine, Lucy Stone, is a reporter in the fictional town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, where she lives in an old farmhouse (quite similar to mine on Cape Cod!) with her restoration carpenter husband Bill and four children. As the series has progressed the kids have grown older, roughly paralleling my own family. We seem to have reached a point beyond which Lucy cannot age–my editor seems to want her to remain forty-something forever, though I have to admit I personally am dying to write “Menopause is Murder!”

I usually write one Lucy Stone mystery every year and “Wicked Witch Murder” came out in August, 2010. I fell in love with one character, a four-year-old boy named Nemo, and he makes a second appearance in a Christmas novella included in “Gingerbread Cookie Murder,” which also features tales by Laura Levine and Joanne Fluke, due to be published in October, 2010. I’ve just finished “English Tea Murder” in which Lucy and her friends visit England, coming out sometime in 2011. This book was inspired when my daughter invited me to accompany her on a trip sponsored by Boston Architectural College where she was a graduate student. My books are classified as “cozies” but a good friend insists they are really “comedies of manners” and I do enjoy expressing my view of contemporary American life.

Now that the kids are grown — I now have two grandchildren — my husband and I are enjoying our empty nest on Cape Cod which we share with our Brittany, Sylvie.


This one of a kind Giveaway will kick off on February 1. Randomly selected winners will be chosen from the entries submitted. One per week for three weeks with Winners selected on February 8, 15 and 22.

So, what’s in this basket?

EASTER BUNNY MURDER book
ENGLISH TEA MURDER book
ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER book
BAKE SALE MURDER book
Plush stuffed Easter Bunny
Natural Willow Basket
and lots of Easter Goodies

Enter by clicking on the above Image!

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in order to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed above are my own. This Review post may contain affiliate links.

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