Off the Books

Lila Wilkins has brought several of the Novel Idea agency's biggest authors to a bridal expo in Inspiration Valley: a wedding-cake baker, a florist, a specialist in matters matrimonial. It should be a good day for the agency. Instead Lila finds a man dead in a wedding cake.

The victim turns out to have had dealings with more than one of the authors she came to promote, which makes every one of her clients a suspect and the case awkwardly close to home. Lila works the connections between them while the town watches, and the killer keeps a step ahead.

The fifth Novel Idea Mystery is a traditional small-town cozy — an amateur sleuth, a bookish setting and a closed circle of suspects — written under the Lucy Arlington name by Susan Furlong.