STAGING WARS
SERIES: A Laura Bishop Mystery #2
GENRE: Cozy Mystery
PUBLISHER: Henery Press
RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2020
PAGES: 252
Laura Bishop’s new home staging business is growing in popularity, though not with her nemesis. Laura has long suspected established interior designer Monica Heller of sabotaging her fledgling company–and having an affair with her late husband.
When the ultra-chic Monica is caught at the scene of a murder, Laura is plenty happy to imagine her languishing in a prison cell with bedsheets far from her normal 600-thread Egyptian cotton. But her delight is short-lived.
When Laura’s friends land on the police’s radar, Laura must overcome her dislike of Monica to help solve the crime. Not an easy task since Laura and Monica have been at war since the second grade.
Other Books In This Series
Longer review coming soon….
Bottom Line: Staging Wars by Grace Topping is charming and smartly written, with layered characters you’ll want as friends. A dash of romantic potential, a town full of suspects, the cutthroat world of home staging… each of these elements serves to bring the mystery together as readers follow the clues – and Laura – through the book. References to fictional detectives & classic mystery novels are the icing on the cake. Fun read!
(I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.)
My Rating: 4 stars / loved it!
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Grace Topping is a recovering technical writer and IT project manager, accustomed to writing lean, boring documents. Let loose to write fiction, she is now creating murder mysteries and killing off characters who remind her of some of the people she dealt with during her career. Fictional revenge is sweet. She’s using her experience helping friends stage their homes for sale as inspiration for her Laura Bishop mystery series. The series is about a woman starting a new career midlife as a home stager. The first book in the series, Staging is Murder, is a 2019 Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel. Grace is the former vice president of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a member of the SINC Guppies and Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her husband in Northern Virginia.
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What about you? What makes you want to read Staging Wars by Grace Topping?
Thank you for your review on “Staging Wars” by Grace Topping and for being part of the book tour.
Sounds like a wonderful book that I just know I’m going to enjoy reading. Definitely on my TBR list.
Thank you, Carrie, for featuring STAGING WARS and for your lovely review. I’m so glad that you enjoyed it.
Sounds like a great cozy.
Grace Topping got me with the title on this one. I usually don’t jump at covers or titles because I prefer reading the blurb and a review from someone I know 🙂 but his title intrigued me. And your review. And the mention of a maybe romance. I need the romance unless it’s a British mystery. That’s strange, but we all have our reading quirks. So…I’m going over to Amazon to check this book out and the first in the series.
It sounds like a really interesting book. Thank you for sharing.