My Series-ous Reading books a vacation for Murder in the Mystery Suite

 

Welcome to another year of Series-ous Reading ,folks, where books from various series get their literary due.

Our theme for 2023 is Triple Play which means that I read three titles in a row from a certain set of well established mysteries and to start things off right, we begin with the first book in Ellery Adams’ Book Resort Mystery series, Murder in the Mystery Suite.

Our leading lady is Jane Steward, a widowed mother of two boys who runs Storyton Hall, a literary themed resort set in a small Virginia town.

Along with her charmingly eccentric Aunt Octavia and Uncle Aloysius , Jane loves  her work in setting up bookish getaways for her guests with the help of the local community who have bookish names for their businesses like Run for Cover and The Cheshire Cat Pub. It’s basically Stars Hollow for book lovers:

No matter how great her job is, Jane knows that renovations are necessary to keep the place going, so she arranges for a Murder and Mystery event to draw some big crowds in.

Everything gets off to a good start as guests dressed up as their favorite fictional detectives arrive, ready for a good time. The opening entertainment is a scavenger hunt with the big prize being a signed copy of letters from renowned author Adela Dundee.

The winner of that book, Felix Hampden, happens to be dressed up as Dundee’s famed sleuth and his prize is quickly sought after by two other participants but to no avail. By the morning, Hampden is declared a “Rip Van Wrinkle”( hotel code name for a dead person on the premises) and the book he won has disappeared.

Jane is stunned by this news and finds herself looking into the case as other deadly departures follow with that book of letters being the key cause. Not only does Jane want to protect her family and her guests, she soon learns that there is a special secret about this collection of letters that some are willing to kill for:

I’ve read Ellery Adams before, mainly her Secret, Book and Scone Society books, so it helps to know that a good time was awaiting me here.

I also read one of the later books in this series-Murder in the Cookbook Nook-and part of my reason for wanting to dive into Storyton Hall more was to get the fuller origin story of the hidden secret library tucked into the place.

Turns out that Jane’s family has been the hereditary guardians of a special collection of literary works such as unpublished plays of Shakespeare and other closely protected lore, a mantle that has now been passed on to her. 

There’s a whole secret society of trained protectors within the Storyton Hall staff known as the Finns who use the secret passages on the hotel grounds to train, spy on suspicious guests and secure the books from all unauthorized after them.

I do love this adventure element to the series and Adams blends it in with the cozy mystery themes of the story quite nicely there. All in all, just like any good book, the Book Resort mysteries are more than meets the eye indeed:

As you can imagine, my appetite for book two is throughly whetted and since February is fast approaching, I am happy to report that Murder in the Paperback Parlor does have a Valentines Day theme!

Jane is pleased to host a romance inspired outing featuring Regency romance writer Rosamund York for the holiday but unfortunately, the author is not as beloved as her books.

With the demise of York, Jane not only fears that the mood has been killed at Storyton so she enlists the aid of her book club buddies to assist in saving the day. Should be seasonal fun for sure and as any Jane Austen fan knows, the search for love can be a sinister affair in more ways than one: