Review of "Plantation Shudders: A Cajun Country Mystery" by Ellen Byron

This is the first book in the Cajun Country Mystery series, featuring amateur sleuth Maggie Crozat.



*****

After a bad breakup, artist Maggie Crozat moves from New York City to her home town of Pelican, Louisiana. There Maggie shares a shotgun house with her Grand-mere;



helps her parents run the Crozat Plantation Bed and Breakfast;



and is a paid docent at a tourist attraction that was once the Doucet Plantation.



The Crozat B&B is full up for Fête de l'été (summer festival), the guests being an elderly newlywed couple; a young techie couple; three frat boys from Georgia; a family from Australia; a man from Texas; and four women who call themselves Cajun Cuties. Things go smoothly until the elderly newlywed couple drops dead. The medical examiner determines that the husband had a heart attack and the wife was murdered. Everyone at the B&B - owners and guests - are suspects in the woman's homicide.

Sheriff Rufus Durand is a good ol' boy with a grudge against the Crozats, whose status as 'southern royalty' is far above his working class roots.



Moreover, Rufus believes an ancestral Crozat put a curse on the Durands, dooming their romantic relationships forever. 🙄 Because of Rufus's antagonism - and poor policing skills - Maggie fears he'll pin the crime on a member of her family. Thus she decides to investigate herself, and scores an unlikely ally.

The Pelican Police Department has a new detective, Rufus's divorced cousin Bo Durand, who just moved to town.



Bo is honest, well-trained, and determined to do a thorough investigation. Moreover, Bo takes a shine to Maggie and her family, who are kind to his 7-year-old autistic son. Thus Bo encourages Maggie's sleuthing, and even provides a clue or two.

As all this is going on, the B&B guests are enjoying their holiday, doing things like sightseeing; exploring Pelican's natural beauty; buying souvenirs; looking for pirate Jean Lafitte's lost treasure; eating delicious cajun food (recipes included at the end); and so on.



Additional characters in the story include a police officer who loves his po-boys too much;



Rufus's girlfriend, who thinks she's scored a real catch; Maggie's cousin Leah, who runs a bake shop; Pelican residents who knew the victim; and more. There are a plethora of suspects for the crime, and Maggie has to use her intelligence, intuition, and puzzle-solving skills to close the case.

I enjoyed the story, which provides a nice feel for the ambiance of southern Louisiana, including it's flora, fauna, and food. On the downside, the depiction of ancestral plantation owners as being 'kind and helpful' to freed slaves is skewed (at best).

The book is a nice beginning to the cozy mystery series.

Recipes in the book include:


Crawfish Crozat


Chulanes (fruity pralines)


Bourbon Pecan Bread Pudding

Rating: 3 stars