Jane Doe Book Club Mystery

Lyla Moody loves her sleepy little town of Sweet Mountain, Georgia. She likes her job as a receptionist for her uncle's private investigative firm, her fellow true-crime obsessed Jane Doe members are the friends she's always wanted, and her parents just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. But recently, with her best friend Melanie on vacation and her ex-boyfriend and horrible cousin becoming an item and moving in next door to her, her idyllic life is on the fritz. The cherry on top of it all is finding Carol, a member of the club, dead and shoved into a suitcase, left at Lyla's front door. Unusual circumstances notwithstanding, with Carol's heart condition, the coroner rules Carol's death undetermined. But when they discover that the suitcase belongs to Melanie, who had returned from her vacation the following morning, Sweet Mountain police begin to suspect Lyla's best friend. Determined that police are following the wrong trail, Lyla begins to seek out the real killer—that is, until she becomes the one sought after. Now, finding the truth could turn her into the killer's next plot twist...

What better time than Halloween to dig into a bracing discussion of a diabolical murder mystery? And what better choice for the Jane Doe Book Club than Agatha Christie's Crooked House? Lyla Moody and her friends are soon embroiled in debate over whether the heroine's actions are particularly believable. But not long after the meeting, sleepy Sweet Mountain, Georgia, is rocked by a murder that uncannily echoes the novel in question. When Lyla and her grandmother arrive at the charity event that Lyla's mother is hosting, they barely have time to hang up their fall jackets before they stumble upon a body in the library. Leonard Richardson, it seems, was robbed and then hit over the head with a brass candlestick-which throws suspicion on Harper Richardson, his young widow and a friend of the Jane Does. Lyla and the rest of the Jane Does pool their prodigious intellects to clear Harper's name. Peculiarly, all of the clues seem to have been lifted directly from the plot of Crooked House. But as Lyla probes the pages of Christie's classic whodunnit for hints, she uncovers secrets from her mother's past-secrets that suggest that Lyla's own house may be crooked as well.

"Lyla Moody and her book club, the Jane Does, are hosting a Halloween party at Magnolia Manor, tailored after Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, but when the lights come on after the staged murder, a real victim lies dead from a gunshot wound in her chest. The victim was an estranged relative of Elaine Morgan, operator of the B&B, who'd earlier been seen arguing with her about the fate of the property. Suspicion immediately falls on Elaine, and she's arrested. The Jane Does believe Elaine is innocent, so when they get the chance to team up with police officer Rosa Landry-a member of the club-they jump on it. But then, the club discovers that two more murders have been brazenly predicted online and in the Sweet Mountain Gazette-and that one of the intended victims is Rosa. Lyla thinks she knows who the killer is, but the only way to find out is by laying a trap using Rosa as bait. But, like an Agatha Christie mystery, the truth is never what it seems. Lyla and her trusty book club will have to sleuth out the killer before Rosa meets her final chapter."