Nothing says family togetherness quite like Grandpa’s 91st birthday, a house full of criminals, and a dead body in the fountain.
The entire Pendleton family is gathering at the family estate for Grandpa’s birthday, and Em is trying to keep everything under control. She is the organizer of the family, the one with the spreadsheets, the schedules, and apparently the ability to keep a collection of grifters, thieves, and contract killers functioning as something resembling a family. She’s the only Pendleton who hasn’t chosen a criminal “specialty” of her own, preferring to stay in the background and help everyone else with theirs. Unfortunately, everyone arrives early.
For Em, this may be the first crime of the weekend.
Then a body turns up in the fountain. The man has been stabbed, nobody seems to know who he is or why he was there, and considering the Pendleton family résumé, the suspect list is rather inconveniently close to home.
Running alongside the murder mystery is a second storyline beginning several weeks earlier, when an inept private investigator continues his predecessor’s legacy of digging into the Pendletons. He is determined to expose the family and finally bring at least one of them to justice. The two storylines gradually work their way toward each other, adding another layer to the mystery without giving away too much too soon.
Em was easily my favorite character. I loved that the person holding this entire criminal enterprise together is armed primarily with organizational skills and spreadsheets. I also found it hysterical that she can manage the complicated lives of her relatives but cannot be bothered to remember the names of her nieces and nephews, referring to them simply as Things 1 through 4.
Even better, Em is genuinely appalled to discover that members of her family are lying to her.
Ma’am. They are criminals.
The humor throughout the book is tongue-in-cheek rather than slapstick, and much of it comes from the Pendletons treating completely abnormal situations as ordinary family business. That worked very well for me.
The mystery itself was solid and kept me interested. I wanted to know who the dead man was, why he was on the property, and, perhaps most importantly, which member of this highly suspicious family put him in the fountain.
My biggest complaint was the romance. There were moments when I wanted the story to stop worrying about who might be attracted to whom, whose feelings were getting hurt, and return to the more pressing matter at hand.
Priorities, people! There is a dead man in the fountain!
Those moments occasionally earned an eye roll from me because the mystery and the wonderfully dysfunctional Pendleton family were more than enough to hold my attention. I didn’t need the romantic elements competing for page space while I was busy trying to solve a murder.
Still, this was a good, solid four-star read. It kept me entertained and curious, and I genuinely enjoyed Em and the bizarre family she somehow manages to keep functioning. It didn’t keep me up past my bedtime, and the dust bunnies remained in moderate danger, but I had fun.
Readers who enjoy quirky family mysteries, dark humor, criminal hijinks, LGBTQ+ representation, and some romance mixed with their murder should have a good time with the Pendletons. Readers looking for a darker crime thriller or a tightly focused murder investigation may find the romantic side plots a little more distracting.
Content warnings should include murder, violence, drowning/death by drowning, and criminal activity. Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
