Moraine’s annual Harmony Festival is anything but harmonious for Story Fischer. She’s lost this year’s Honey Queen crown to the town’s biggest shoplifter, her domineering mother wants Story’s beehive banned from The Wild Clover festival booth, and a visiting twelve-year-old genius is wreaking havoc with his explosive science experiments…

Then Story stumbles upon a dead body in the cemetery, only to have it disappear—and then reappear during the festival parade. When her mother begins dating the prime suspect and the young scientist goes missing, Story is determined to get to the bottom of this murder. It’s up to her to make a beeline for the truth before everything in Moraine blows sky high.

Review

Shopkeeper and apiarist Melissa “Story” Fischer has high hopes for Moraine, Wisconsin’s upcoming Harmony Festival.  I mean, sure, the title of Honey Queen went to the town kleptomaniac instead of to Story.  And then there’s the matter of the twelve-year-old chemistry nut running around town scaring the heck out of people with his homemade bombs.  But the extra traffic on Main Street should result in increased sales, and with any luck, the portable observation hive she’s got rigged up will help convince townspeople that her honeybees are nothing to fear. 

Financial success and neighborly acceptance become the least of Story’s worries, however, when she takes her dog out for a walk in the local graveyard and trips over a body in a garbage bag – a body which disappears just as soon as she leaves the scene to call the police, only to turn up again in the fireplace of her ex-husband’s now vacant house.  What’s going on in Moraine, and why?  Can Story get to the bottom of things before the Harmony Festival is thrown into chaos – and before the killer can claim another victim?

Plan Bee is Hannah Reed’s third Queen Bee Mystery.  I really enjoyed Reed’s last book, Mind Your Own Beeswax, but unfortunately, Plan Bee didn’t quite grab me the same way.  Story’s still a winsome heroine, and I love that Plan Bee (like all of Reed’s tales) takes place in Story’s hometown; there’s something very compelling about the fact that the enemies Story has as an adult are the same enemies she had in high school, and Reed does some fun things with the idea that you can’t escape your past.  But while Mind Your Own Beeswax takes full advantage of setting and circumstance, Plan Bee shies away from them, and the book ends up feeling kind of generic and one-dimensional by comparison.  The mystery’s not all that complicated and the stakes aren’t terribly high, resulting in a lack of tension and drama that drags down the pace.

As for the book’s supporting cast, generally speaking, I’m a fan of Reed’s series characters.  Police chief Johnny Jay’s a unique and compelling antagonist, Story’s high-maintenance sister Holly is a funny and determined sidekick, and Story’s boyfriend Hunter is both charming and refreshingly supportive of his significant other’s sleuth-y tendencies.  Unfortunately, however, Johnny Jay, Holly, and Hunter all play very minor roles in Plan Bee; for the most part, they’re relegated to the sidelines while Story sneaks around town with perhaps Reed’s most annoying and over-the-top creation: Story’s off-kilter, homemade-press-pass-sporting “journalist” neighbor P.P. (short for “Pity-Party”) Patti Dwyre.  Now, I get Reed’s reason for doing this; Patti’s game for anything and will stop at nothing to get her story, which means she’s the perfect mechanism to get our heroine involved in all kinds of crazy situations.  But she’s just too much. Patti’s a cartoon – a character without any real depth, which leaves Story without anyone of substance to play off of.

Reviewed by Kat

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