The artist group is on retreat. Leila takes a walk and finds a dead body...she even recognizes the person. The retreat sounds flaky to me but the mystery of the dead body was interesting. She sure sticks her nose where it doesn't belong. There are plenty of twists and turns as she follows her instincts to find who killed the person, why on the island, and is it connected to a cold case in Kansas. How is a casino part of the story!! Interesting to see it unravel.

Great book, by an author I will read more of! Thrilling plot, great writing and brilliant characters. Highly recommend to others.

Death In Smoke by Barbara Elle is the second book in the Cape Mysteries Series and features Leila Goodfriend. She allowed herself to be talked into attending a Red Barn artist retreat at a B&B on a remote island off Cape Cod. She decides to go for a walk one morning before breakfast and sees red stains on a snowbank. Leila begins to dig through the snow with her hands and she recognizes the bloodied body of Susie. Leila is digging, fighting her fears, and her head is filled with questions because Susie is the girlfriend of her ex-boyfriend.
Leila's character is so slow in answering the police who is sent out to secure the crime scene, I wanted to answer for her. Leila has recently gone through the breakup of a relationship, and she is trying to work through disappointments in her life. The story has some interesting twists as Leila searches for answers to why Susie was killed. Sometimes Leila's actions seemed out of character. This mystery will lead her to an unexpected answer as she solves this case. The story is good, but it does start very slow. I found myself putting it down a couple of times before finishing the book.
Oh, a personal rant...I was surprised the cook preparing breakfast at the retreat was smoking around the food! LOL, rant over!
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

After a blinding snowstorm, artist and amateur sleuth Leila Goodfriend wakes early in the morning for a walk in the woods to think, to escape. When she stumbles on the bloodied body of a woman buried in a snow bank, Leila digs desperately, her fingers bleed, shaking with fear, she knows who it is.

It’s Susie, the ex-girlfriend of Steve, a failed photographer she dumped months before.

Leila was at a creative retreat with her eccentric group of Red Barn artist friends, on a remote island off Cape Cod. On the rebound from a relationship, Leila found herself attracted to Detective John Grace, a partner in both romance and crime investigation.

However, when the police arrive on the crime scene, Detective Grace warns her not to investigate a murder case, again.

As an artist, Leila knows that bodies have a story to tell. Leila slips into Susie’s autopsy—and the body reveals an enigmatic clue:

Susie died on a bed of long-stemmed roses.

Steve, the police’s prime murder suspect, begs Leila to help him—swearing he has evidence that Susie’s killer is a suspect in a cold case in Kansas. Leila confronts the suspect, pocketing an intriguing piece of evidence—an arrowhead.

Tracking the trail of blood and revenge from Cape Cod to a Native American casino in Kansas, where a ritualistic murder reveals a cold case killer—and a deadly secret from Leila’s past.

An ok thriller but very slow to get going. Characters wishy washy without much,well, character. Plot was okay but muddled.

Lelia Goodfriend goes for a walk to clear her head while attending a creative retreat with her eccentric group of Red Barn artist friends, on a remote island off Cape Cod. She stumbles across a body buried in the snow, and she knows this person! It is the ex-girlfriend of Steve a member of the retreat. Lelia calls Detective Grace to the scene. Lelia and Grace have a strange 'friendship' going on. Lelia can't let the police investigate. She too does her own detective work, and it could end up badly. I enjoyed the author's first book more than I did this one. It seemed to drag on too much for me. I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book.

Death in Smoke (The Cape Mysteries #2) by Barbara Elle was an ok mystery with lots of problems. The plot was boring and slow, the writing was chaotic and difficult to follow, and there was no connection with the characters. I definitely struggled to finish the book.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions expressed are my own.

I struggled getting through this book. There was too much expounding on things that didn’t really need to go into detail and not enough detail on the things that should have been written about. I’ll give this book two stars.

Fast paced, tense and filled with potential villains of the duplicitous, murderous variety.

An amateur sleuth stumbles on the frozen body of an acquaintance and stirs up the local police with her efforts to solve the horrible murder in the winter woods.

What a ride this novel was. Scary, thrilling and a page turner for sure. "Death in Smoke" is a great novel by Barbara Elle. I recommend this novel, and this mystery series.

Gritty and intense! Complex and compelling! An edgy mystery full pulse-pounding suspense! The fast pace of the of the wildly-captivating plot kept me swiping the pages feverishly long past my bedtime.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book in order to read and provide a voluntary, unbiased and honest review, should I choose to do so.