Title: The Mind of a Sleuth
Author: LB Robbins
Publisher: Top Link Publishing
ISBN: 1514471264
Pages: 80
Genre: Fiction / Cozy Mystery
Review by: Jake Bishop

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Cozy mysteries are meant to be just that—cozy—and this one certainly fills the bill. It has a widowed mother of a Pastor taking up the role of unauthorized chief investigator. It has a cadre of characters that would feel right at home in a weekly installment of Murder She Wrote. It has a conflicted lothario who comes to a bad end. It even has a surprise or two in store before the mounting mystery gets solved by an errant slip of the tongue. What could be cozier?

Angellica Peterson is the fictional clear-eyed, insightful, and reverent woman of a certain age who recounts this engaging tale. She’s the mother of Robert, a churchman who requests her help when he confesses to being hoodwinked out of a trust fund that Angellica had set up for him and his family. It seems another member of the church, Mr. Moyer, a man known by many as a skilled handyman and jack-of-all-trades, was also skilled at bilking individuals out of financial assets. And now, he seems to have disappeared. The more Angellica looks into things, the longer the victim list seems to grow. However, her son’s incident seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Other victims of the parishioner’s plots are decidedly more female than male.

Angellica joins a church study group to reacquaint herself with the story of Job, but also to become better acquainted with some of the ladies who have come under the influence of the helpful and handsome Mr. Moyer. By simply being a concerned, caring, and supportive friend, she’s able to ascertain the extent of the handyman’s high jinks. But then, as they say, the plot thickens when Mr. Moyer is shot and subsequently expires. The suspect list, already long, is now lengthened with the inclusion of the philanderer’s estranged wife and their mysterious son.

Robbins is a skilled writer who keeps her story moving forward at a pace that’s swift enough to maintain energy but not so speedy as to hinder comprehension. Her prose is charmingly conversational and her forays into religion and horticulture infuse each of those subject areas with an air of authenticity. While the goings-on are definitely indelicate and potentially tawdry, she never slips into crude or profane language. This author’s amateur gumshoe is definitely in the more refined mode of a Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple. If your literary tastes run to potentially calamitous tales that are always kept appropriately cozy, you just might want to peer into The Mind Of A Sleuth.