The senior superlatives in my high-school yearbook didn’t include Most Likely to Murder. Did yours?

Probably not.

But that’s the title of the fourth (and last?) novel in Carole Shmurak’s Susan Lombardi series. I reviewed the first in the series last month—and I had already read the second and third—so now I’m caught up.

But let’s return to those senior superlatives. Though I don’t attend class reunions (except once), I enjoyed attending Shmurak’s one vicariously. You can read my brief review of her book below—but first a few remarks about my own reunion experience, where no murders were committed:

That one exception to my vow to avoid all reunions was for my college class, not high-school. It was the 50th, so I had to go. And I did enjoy it. I’ve written about it in a total of seven posts:

• An upcoming reunion—words and all (April 22, 2019)
• Vietnam War legacy, Al Gore, and more: The first 24 hours of the reunion (May 28, 2019)
• “Vote early and often,” he said; “support whoever the Democratic nominee is.” (May 29, 2019)
• “We were going to change the world. What went wrong?” (May 30, 2019)
• Still more about the reunion. (Will it ever end? Yes, it really will… but not yet.) (May 31, 2019)
• Do we have fair elections? Can we? Do we have equal representation? Can we? (June 1, 2019)
• Is it even possible to have an intergenerational dialogue? Is that really what we had on Wednesday? (June 2, 2019)

Now back to Most Likely to Murder. This is about a 32nd high-school reunion (don’t ask) in New Jersey. Like the three previous installments in the series, it’s an Agatha Christie type of cozy: amateur detective, lot of suspects that can be gathered in one room (so a reunion is a perfect locale), clues that lead the reader to suspect one person after another, all violence taking place off-stage, and a convenient conclusion that wraps everything up. All written with a sense of humor. Yes, it’s lighter than my usual fare, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. You will too.

Categories: Books