Deadly Summer Nights Book Review - Christy's Cozy Corners

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Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Deadly Summer Nights (A Catskill Summer Resort Mystery) by Vicki Delany. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!

A summer of fun at a Catskills resort comes to an abrupt end when a guest is found murdered, in this new 1950s set mystery series.

Deadly Summer Nights (A Catskill Summer Resort Mystery)

by Vicki Delany

I received this book free; however, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive compensation at no cost to you.

Deadly Summer Nights (A Catskill Summer Resort Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: ‎Berkley (September 7, 2021)
Mass Market Paperback‏: ‎304 pages

It’s the summer of 1953, and Elizabeth Grady is settling into Haggerman’s Catskills Resort. As a vacation getaway, Haggerman’s is ideal, and although Elizabeth’s ostentatious but well-meaning mother is new to running the resort, Elizabeth is eager to help her organize the guests and the entertainment acts. But Elizabeth will have to resort to untested abilities if she wants to save her mother’s business.

When a reclusive guest is found dead in a lake on the grounds, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto is found in his cabin, the local police chief is convinced that the man was a Russian spy. But Elizabeth isn’t so sure, and with the fate of the resort hanging in the balance, she’ll need to dodge red herrings, withstand the Red Scare, and catch a killer red-handed.

My review of Deadly Summer Nights

I love starting a new cozy mystery series, so I was very excited when I discovered Vicki Delany’s new Catskill Summer Resort Mystery series. The books she writes as both Vicki Delany and Eva Gates are among my favorites. I get lost in her books, and they give me new places to escape to when this crazy world gets me down.

The Catskills….I’ve never been there, but I know it was the place for city dwellers to escape during the time period in which Deadly Summer Nights is set. I mean, I’ve seen Dirty Dancing at least a dozen times, so that sort of qualifies me as an expert. If you’ve seen the movie, you can picture the setting very easily. Small white cabins where the staff stayed; a lake; lots of trees; the dance hall. It’s a place like this that Elizabeth Grady is in charge of running. When her mother inherited Haggerman’s, she needed her daughter’s business sense to keep the place afloat. It’s squeaking by, but then a guest is murdered and things go crazy!

I’ll admit, it did take me a little while to get into the book. Sometimes it is that way with first books in a new series. Deadly Summer Nights takes place during a unique time period, and the mindset of the people who lived during this time period plays a big part in the mystery. So, as a reader, you’ve got to remember that during this unique period, fear of communists infiltrating the US was a big thing. Once I was able to settle into the story, I couldn’t stop reading this brilliant cozy mystery book!

The main characters’ personalities become very clear throughout Deadly Summer Nights. I found them to be very well-written, and I really bonded with them. They seem like a close-knit family even though only Elizabeth, her mother, and her aunt are blood relatives. I like that other potential regulars are introduced in the book, and there may even be some future romances. Of course, there’s bound to be “romantic” drama, and one particular side character seems to be involved in a lot of it! This drama leads to a really hilarious departure scene.

I absolutely loved figuring out whodunit along with Elizabeth and her cohorts. There are so many red herrings that you’re bound to end up at the bottom of the lake looking at the wrong one several times! The mystery is just so well-plotted! If I didn’t have so many books to read, I’d probably go back and read it again just so I can fit all of the puzzle pieces together! This is such a wonderful cozy mystery, and I highly recommend Deadly Summer Nights to all of you who love solving them!

About Vicki Delany

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than forty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, the Catskill Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane.

Vicki is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It Crime Writing Festival. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. Vicki is the recipient of the 2019 Derrick Murdoch Award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.