Cold as Ice: The Country Club Murders

Widowed Kansas City socialite Ellison Russell has a lot on her plate in Mulhern’s sprightly sixth Country Club mystery (after Watching the Detectives). Inconvenient guests are on their way to celebrate Thanksgiving 1974 at Ellison’s house; Ellison’s 16-year-old daughter, Grace, is going through the throes of first love; and some eyebrow-raising gossip is enlivening neighborhood cocktail parties. The last thing Ellison needs is to find the body of Laurie Michaels, the mother of Grace’s crush, frozen solid in the local country club’s walk-in freezer. For Ellison, even more pressing than finding the guilty party is proving that the police’s prime suspect, the victim’s husband, Tom, is innocent. If Tom is convicted of Laurie’s murder, then the insurance company will not honor his life insurance claim, and if that happens, the bank in which Ellison and Grace own a controlling interest will fail. This is a frothy, fun, nostalgia-filled romp that keeps the reader turning the pages, happy to be spending time with the protagonist as she deals with crime, cranky relatives, and the iron-clad rules of comportment for ladies of the monied class in the 1970s. (Oct.)