Murder Outside the Lines (Pen & Ink Mysteries #3) by Krista Davis #bookreview #mystery

Title: Murder Outside the Lines

Author: Krista Davis

Publisher:  Kensington Cozies

Publication Date: September 28, 2021

Page Count:  352

My rating: 4 stars

About the book:

Includes A Front and Back Cover for You to Color!
 
With Halloween just around the corner, the fall colors in Georgetown are brilliant. As manager of the Color Me Read bookstore, coloring book creator Florrie Fox has arranged for psychic author Hilda Rattenhorst to read from Spooktacular Ghost Stories. But the celebrity medium arrives for the event in hysterics, insisting she just saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet in a nearby alley. Is someone trying to sweep murder under the rug? Florrie calls in her policeman beau, Sergeant Eric Jonquille, but the carpet corpse has disappeared without a trace.

Then in the middle of her reading, Hilda chillingly declares that she feels the killer’s presence in the store. Is this a publicity stunt or a genuine psychic episode? It seems there’s no happy medium. When a local bibliophile is soon discovered missing, a strange mystery begins to unroll. Now it’s up to Florrie and Jonquille to expose a killer’s true colors . . .

Murder Outside the Lines by Krista Davis is the third book in the cozy Pen & Ink Mysteries series. This series has the unique set up of the protagonist being an artist who draws adult coloring books so to celebrate that the publisher has made the cover of physical copies a drawing to be colored in by the reader. Each book in this series does have it’s own mystery to be solved so books may be read as a standalone or in any order if choosing to do so. There of course is character building carried over from book to book though for those who follow the series from the beginning.

In the first book readers were introduced to Florrie Fox who by day manages the Color Me Read bookstore in Georgetown, Washington D.C.. After work Florrie draws adult coloring books creating images from things she sees that inspire her. Florrie lives in the carriage house that is owned by her boss Professor Maxwell and has settled into her new life while even started a new romance. With Halloween quickly approaching the town is getting ready for the holiday with spooky decorations and activities galore. However, for Florrie she could have done without the actual dead body she stumbled upon under a fake coffin in a yard.

I have been following the Pen & Ink Mysteries series from the beginning and was excited to dive into book three after a long wait between installments. As always I will again mention I love what the author created with an adult coloring artist as the protagonist and the covers being blank to color. It did take a minute to familiarize myself with the cast of characters again but once I did I completely enjoyed this quirky bunch yet again. This one had a slight paranormal feel with all the Halloween hijinx which I also enjoyed and will happily return to this series yet again in the future.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

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