Murder at the Hacienda
by Amanda Allen
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
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Pub Date 5 Nov 2024 | Archive Date 4 Nov 2024
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Description
Former New York darling turned amateur sleuth Madeline Vaughn-Alwin finds herself trapped in the beautiful hacienda of the Luhan family with a killer at Christmas!
Newly engaged Maddie is hoping for a quiet Christmas filled with fun and festivity with her gorgeous husband-to-be Dr David Cole, but the moment she bumps into old friend Katrina Wilton, Maddie's Christmas plans are thoroughly destroyed. Katrina is now married to the dashing, yet troubled veteran Alfonso Luhan, son of the infamous local landowner, Don Victor Luhan, and is celebrating Christmas at the family hacienda, Los Pineros – Katrina insists that Maddie and David simply must join them.
However, Maddie and David quickly find that things in the Luhan family are far from merry . . . Don Victor casts a cruel and overbearing hand over his ailing wife Isabella and their four children – all with their own secrets and eccentricities. So when Maddie stumbles across Don Victor's brutally murdered body early one morning, snow turned crimson around the ghastly scene, she cannot believe she has once again been thrown into a murder mystery!
As a snowstorm rages, and everyone is trapped inside the idyllic manor house, Maddie must act fast to solve a very tricky family affair and bring the murderer to justice before Christmas.
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781448311019 |
PRICE | US$29.99 (USD) |
PAGES | 224 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
I love the setting of these books.
Santa Fe IS a magical environment and the author does a great job using her protagonist as the medium for conveying that.
Through Maddie’s artist eyes, and through her experience settling in to a new part of the country, this series gives the reader that same sense of joy and wonder.
I also love the family our protagonist has built in her new town… the books convey a sense of how important environment is to our happiness and well-being, but also the importance of friends and family ( whether “ real” or selected).
Netgalley provided me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a candid r3view.
In the latest entry in the Santa Fe Murder series, Maddie runs into an old school friend in Santa Fe, who has moved with her husband to her husband's family home on a remote ranch. Maddie's friend asks her to join the family at the ranch for Christmas, accompanied by Maddie's fiance, Dr. David Cole. Of course the family is unhappy, with an overbearing patriarch making everyone's lives miserable. No surprise that Maddie finds him one morning, murdered, and that no one seems to be very sad about it.
Maddie and David and their artist friend Gunther (also at the ranch trying to write a novel in the quiet surroundings) are delightful well-drawn characters, and the members of the family all have their motives and quirks. Hopefully some of them become recurring characters. The setting of Santa Fe in the 1920s is fascinating and a reminder of just how remote it was at that time. The book could probably be read as a standalone, since it's removed from the usual setting of Amanda Allen's series, but the development of Maddie and David's relationship is fun to follow, so recommend reading all of the books. Thanks to Severn House and NetGalley for the ARC.
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Meredith Wild; Jillian Liota
General Fiction (Adult), Romance, Women's Fiction