The Antique House Murders: The Oakwood Book Club Mystery Series

The Antique House Murders by Leslie Nagel is the second book The Oakwood Mystery series. Charley Carpenter lives in Oakwood, Ohio where she owns Old Hat Vintage Fashions. Her friend and mentor, Calvin Prescott of Prescott Auctions is handling the sale of the contents of Mulbridge House. The heirs plan to demolish the old home once everything of value has been removed. Charley is at Mulbridge House to look at some vintage fashions that Calvin has put aside for her. While at the house Charley witnesses a skirmish between Holland Mulbridge and Millie Peache. Millie as the president of SOAP (Sustain Oakwood’s Architectural Past) is spearheading the campaign against the demolition of the home. The Oakwood Planning Commission will soon vote on the fate of Mulbridge House. Millie claims that Augusta Mulbridge, Holland’s mother, had drafted a new will that would leave the home to SOAP. Will the beautiful but decaying home be saved or will it fall victim to the wrecking ball? On Monday Charley heads over to Prescott Auctions to pick up the items she purchased from Mulbridge House. The place is ablaze with lights which is unusual for that hour of the morning. Charley heads inside with her friend, Dimitri and finds Calvin dead in his office. She calls Detective Marcus Trenault (her boyfriend) who in the building across the street. Before Trenault arrives, Charley takes notice that someone had thoroughly searched the office and left it a mess. Charley later discovers that there have been a series of robberies over the weekend. Are they related to Calvin’s death? Trenault asks Charley to stay out of this investigation, but this was her friend. Charley starts asking questions and uncovers some illegal activities. But what happens when Charley gets too close to a killer who does not wish to be caught? The Antique House Murders is the second book in The Oakwood Mystery series. I suggest you start with The Book Club Murders (the first book). The author goes over what occurred in The Book Club Murders and Charley’s past history, but, due to the numerous characters, you might be a confused. As you can see from my summary, there are several storylines in this mystery novel (there are more than mentioned above). While the mystery was convoluted, the killer’s identity was easy to discern. I give The Antique House Murders 3 out of 5 stars. This book, unlike traditional cozy mysteries, has foul language (which it did not need) and intimate scenes. There were also some remarks (I believe they were meant to be jokes) made about sexual assault and rape that I did not appreciate (between Charley and Trenault as foreplay). The Antique House Murders has the traditional nasty cop with Chief Zehring, boyfriend who keeps telling Charley to stay out of the investigation (which she ignores), and boyfriend’s ex who works with him (which makes Charley jealous). Charley gets carried away with her investigation. She continually lies to Trenault and some of her actions are bordering on or are illegal. Charley continually puts her life in danger (it got tedious). Trenault’s jealousy of Sean Ambrose was unpleasant (no woman likes a boyfriend who is continually jealous). Does he not trust Charley? I did appreciate the information on how Safety Departments operate and the Leica-10 3D scanner (I want to know more about this gizmo).

A nice easy read that held my interest

Wonderful book that was hard to put down. Very exciting ending.