November 1, 2024
With publisher plans to make this a splashy global release, Mullen debuts with a locked-room mystery on Michigan's Mackinac Island, where game designer Addie is visiting her grandma Mimi for the weekend. They're attending a charity auction when a storm arrives, trapping all the guests in the mansion. When the host is murdered, Mimi and Addie turn sleuth. Prepub Alert.
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February 25, 2025
Septuagenarian and longtime Mackinac Island resident Mimi receives an invitation from her arch enemy, Jane, to attend an auction at Jane's palatial estate. But along with it comes a note threatening to reveal a terrible secret from Mimi's past. Unsettled and upset, Mimi contacts her granddaughter, Addie, to ask for her help and support. Addie is going through a bad breakup, so she's happy to escape to Mackinac. When Addie arrives, she notices that Mimi is unusually tense, but when they appear at Jane's auction, there's worse to come: Jane is found murdered, and then more bodies begin to pile up. There's a terrible snowstorm, the police can't reach Jane's mansion, and those attending begin to fear there's a murderer on the loose, or worse, that one of them might be a killer. Addie is the creator of Murderscape, a popular murder-investigation video game, so playing amateur sleuth is second nature. She and Mimi team up in a search fraught with unexpected twists and plenty of danger. Die-hard fans of cozy mysteries may enjoy this debut, a feast of a winter tale.
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March 15, 2025
A testy Mackinac Island grandmother invites her granddaughter to a charity event that turns into a "pajama party from hell," one that will test both of their very different skill sets to the limit. Mimi MacLaine would love to see more of downstater Addie Paget, orphaned at 21 and then dumped by her fianc�, Brian Perry, who took all the credit for developing their wildly popular video game, Murderscape, and sold his company to Microsoft for big bucks that went to him alone. So why, Mimi asks, doesn't Addie join her at a party thrown by her neighbor Jane Ireland, a wealthy widow who's recently started an affair with her own son-in-law, Matthew Reed, who's married to Jane's outraged daughter, Alexandra? Jane's invitation to celebrate with her "son-in-lover" might sound less tempting if Mimi told Addie that Jane is blackmailing her into coming and bidding top dollar on one of the items she's auctioning off, so she doesn't mention that. To the surprise of everyone but the reader, Jane is stabbed to death just as a historic snowstorm hits Mackinac, shutting down communications, preventing anyone from lowering the literal drawbridge over Jane's moat, keeping the authorities from entering the place, and trapping the guests--most of whom are evidently being blackmailed as well--in their palatial digs until the "snowmageddon" abates. The upside is that Mimi and Addie have plenty of time to pool their resources, question the boilerplate suspects, one-up each other's brightly witty remarks, puzzle over a truly ingenious series of clues, and solve the murder. Oops, make that murders. Despite the title, this is absolutely a game from the first word to the last.
COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.