(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Put-in-Bay is a quaint village on an island in the middle of Lake Erie.  Even with a population that balloons during the summer tourist season, it's a peaceful town full of neighborly folks who do their best to get along.  Mostly.  Bea Cartwright—a brash Manhattanite who recently moved to Put-in-Bay to open a posh B&B—has had it up to here with her neighbors.  Chandra Morrissey won't silence the annoying hippie music she plays at all hours or keep her cat out of Bea's pansies.  Bea's other neighbor, winery owner Kate Wilder, won't quit whining about the traffic problems caused by constant deliveries to the B&B, complaints which are costing Bea time and money.  The women have brought their squabbles before the town magistrate so many times that he'll do anything to end the fighting.  Even something totally unconventional.

Sentenced to start a book club and meet for a weekly discussion for one year, the trio reluctantly accepts their punishment.  Almost as soon as they begin reading Murder on the Orient Express, life begins to imitate art a little too close to home.  Peter Chan, the genial owner of a new Chinese restaurant in town, is stabbed to death.  Horrified, the neighbors turned book club members turned amateur detectives vow to get to the bottom of the grisly murder.  In order to do so, they'll have to do something radical—get along.  Can they put aside their differences long enough to figure out what happened to Chan?  Or will they end up killing each other first?

Mayhem at the Orient Express, the first installment in Kylie Logan's League of Literary Ladies mystery series, is just as fun as it sounds.  Far-fetched?  Totally.  Still, it's a light-hearted novel with a colorful setting, likable characters, and a fun bookish theme.  It's nothing super original or memorable, but I enjoyed Mayhem at the Orient Express enough to pick up the next book in the series.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of the Ethnic Eats series by Kylie Logan and the Noodle Shop Mystery series by Vivien Chien)

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for brief, mild language (no F-bombs), mild sexual innuendo, and violence

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find