Deadly Keepsakes: A Tori Winters Mystery

To say I'm a fan of Anita Dickason's work would be an understatement. With Deadly Business, she established herself firmly as one of my favorite authors. So I had high hopes for Deadly Keepsakes, the first in Dickason's Tori Winters series. Boy, did she deliver!

In Deadly Keepsakes, we meet Tori Winters, a hospice nurse. She's in hot water with some questionable characters after she reports the death of one of her patients as suspicious. So when she receives a call from an attorney in Texas, wanting to meet with her, she decides to pull up stakes and meet him in person. Tori leaves town expecting to stay in Granbury, Texas for a few days at most.

Imagine her surprise when she learns about a grandmother she never knew. Even more surprising, this grandmother has left Tori a massive inheritance. The inheritance includes a mansion, built by Tori's mobster great-grandfather. Word travels fast in small towns, and it soon gets out that Tori may want to stay in Granbury. Suddenly a whole lot of people seem to be trying to persuade her that maybe she should sell.

Tori's grandmother has left her a message indicating that the house holds secrets. Tori has to figure out what the secrets are and unravel their meaning while dodging ever-escalating attempts to run her off - or just get her out of the way for good.

The cozy mystery may not be Dickason's usual genre, but she has written a bang-up good story here. The characters are people you love, hate, or love to hate. Tori hires Mia, Cammie, Tina, and Heidi to help her clean up her new home, but they soon become her girl gang. I love how Mia knows everybody and can hook Tori up with a solution to just about every problem she faces, because isn't that exactly how small towns are? Can Jonah Greer, Tori's local legal counsel, be trusted? Is he really advising her to do what he thinks is best, or does he have an ulterior motive? And snobby socialite Myra and her equally snobby daughter, well, my fingers just itched to slap them as I was reading.

And while the story has lighthearted moments, it also hooks you from the start and pulls you along. The action starts in chapter one and doesn't let up until the big reveal. There was never a moment in this book when I thought, gosh, this story is lagging. To the contrary. I could barely tear myself away from it!

The historical notes at the end of the book were a nice finishing touch. I had never heard of Benny Binion and the Top O'Hill Terrace, and it's always interesting to learn a little bit about Texas' colorful characters!

Found family, danger, intrigue, a wonderful cast of characters, and an engaging mystery – sounds like a five-star read to me!