An Au Pair to Remember: A Male Housekeeper Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Cozy Cat Press (January 27, 2019)
Paperback: 260 pages

Synopsis

From the author of the award-winning Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective series comes the Male Housekeeper Mysteries, focusing on charming characters, snappy dialogue, eclectic murders, and cunning confidence schemes. To his mind, Cam Reddick has failed—as a husband, as a father, and as a professional. After recognizing that his vanilla credentials didn’t stack up in a big city brimming with overachievers and toiling in drudgery for half of a decade, an emotionally raw Cam returns to his childhood hometown—the quaint and quirky village of Rusted Bonnet, Michigan. He’s determined to resuscitate relationships marred by youthful immaturity, most importantly those with his ex-wife Kacey Gingerfield (who doubles as the village’s Deputy Chief of Police) and their first grader, Emma. Armed with striking looks and an endearing proclivity for mixing metaphors, but saddled by “momma’s boy” tendencies, Cam takes the helm of his mother’s housekeeping business—Peachy Kleen. Access to homes across the village facilitates Cam’s penchant for amateur sleuthing as Kacey’s aide-de-camp. Surrounded by Kacey, his sophisticated mother Darby, garrulous senior housekeeper Samantha, and recuse fish cum confidant Bait, Cam’s circuitous journeys to solving murders and unravelling complex cons hasten his struggle down the path of self-healing to self-respect. And there’s hope that—just maybe—he can rekindle the romance he once had with Kacey.

In An Au Pair to Remember, Cam’s plan for a quiet return to Rusted Bonnet is dashed when a beautiful German au pair, Greta Astor, is found dead in Dutch McRae’s foyer with all signs pointing to a hastily disassembled trip wire at the top of the stairs. When Kacey learns that Cam was cleaning the McRae home the previous afternoon, she confides to him that Chief Bernie Leftwich is set on arresting Dutch for the murder—either alone or in tandem with Greta’s bartender boyfriend. But she worries that Bernie’s been duped. And later, when his mother Darby becomes a suspect, Cam inserts himself into the investigation and stumbles through a series of ostensible incongruities—a thief swallowing a cache of stolen diamonds, a snack food distributor laundering money, and a Cash-for-Gold scam. Meanwhile, Peachy Kleen’s young African housekeeper has disappeared with one of the company vans. All the while, Cam finds himself flirting with his new neighbor and struggling with his complicated feelings for Kacey.

Review

This new series starter takes the cozy “norm” and turns it upside down.

Cam is an interesting protagonist to start this series.  He is divorced but on decent terms with his ex (after many years of earning that trust back) and runs a cleaning company with no qualms about getting in there and doing the work alongside his employees.  He also has Celiac Disease so that means no gluten in his diet.  There is a somewhat small cast of characters, at least ones that I believe we will see in future books: Cam’s mother Dabney, his ex-wife Kasey, his daughter Emma, a police chief, several employees, and a few citizens of the town.  I am willing to bet we will meet more citizens of Rusted Bonnet in future books and with new mysteries.  Oh, and we can’t forget Bait, the fish that is a good listener for Cam while he deciphers the clues to discover the killer.

There are two mysteries to solve in this book – who killed Greta and where did Becka disappear to with one of the work trucks.  The majority of the book focuses on discovering Greta’s killer, but there is a fair amount of time devoted to Becka’s disappearance.  Two women have Cam captivated – his ex Kacey and his new neighbor Elena.  Will one of them come out ahead?

The mystery is well written and I have to say that while I didn’t guess the killer, I suspected this person of something…what I’m not quite sure but I knew something wasn’t quite right.  The pieces fell into place and Cam did do what most protagonists in cozies do, go after the bad guy on their own without telling someone where or what they were doing.  Not smart Cam so hope you learned something in this first book!  I enjoyed the bantering between Kacey and Cam, they have a history together and while she shouldn’t be telling him some of the details of the case, they are able to work together to help break the case wide open.

This is a promising new series and we give it 4 paws up.

About the Author

Stephen Kaminski is the author of An Au Pair to Remember, the first installment of the Male Housekeeper Mystery series.  He also writes the award-winning Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective books.  Stephen is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School and serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the trade association representing the United States’ poison control system and its fifty-five centers.  He lives with his daughter and rescue kitty in the Washington, DC area.

Facebook * Goodreads

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway