most innovative use of a pizza oven 2019

 Theoretically I really enjoy mysteries and thrillers. In practice, so many of the ones I start reading end up prominently featuring rape that I tend to avoid the genre. My mother assured me this one featured neither so I decided to give it a shot.

The Lucky One is set on an old estate in California wine country. It’s recently been sold off to developers, despite the objections of the local community. They think the developers will rip out all the historical features of the property, and they’re right. Unfortunately for the developers, they start by digging up the old cemetery – and end up finding a new body.

The family members who sold off the property are all suspects, but who’s involved and why they’ve acted as they have is slowly revealed throughout the novel. The author did a nice job of undercutting most of your initial assumptions about what’s happened. Although not all the family members receive the same level of fleshing out as the primary characters, they largely rise above cliché. The characters are believable enough as real people that even though some of their choices end up being outlandish (yes, this involves the pizza oven) they still come off as plausible.

Unfortunately, the story falls down at the end for me. The twist/solution at the end does fit with all the pieces provided, but was poorly integrated into the plot as a whole. Although the author clearly intended it to have a real shock impact, the reveal worked more as a technical solution to a puzzle than as the climax of a mystery.

All in all – enjoyable enough, even if it doesn’t entirely cohere.