Tricia Miles is the owner of a mystery bookstore in Stoneham, New Hampshire. The whole town is celebrating Founder’s Day, and it should be a wonderful event. Tricia is looking forward to a busy day with plenty of sales. However, Tricia’s friend Deborah Black is killed in an apparent accident as she’s making a speech to open the festivities. Tricia starts asking some questions and hears a lot of gossip about the victim. It soon becomes obvious there is much more to Deborah’s death, as well as her life, than it first appears. Tricia is determined to get to the bottom of it, even when she’s faced with a crisis of her own - her valued assistant Ginny may be moving on to run her own store.

Sentenced to Death is the fifth book in the Booktown mystery series. The plot of the book is interesting and the book is fast-paced. Tricia is an intelligent character and she does plenty of investigating. She is smart of enough to call 9-1-1 when faced with a dangerous situation instead of acting foolishly and trying to take care of everything on her own. Unfortunately, the tone of the book as well as the other characters detract from the plot and drag the book down.

I like the realistic relationship between Tricia and her sister Angelica. There is much sibling rivalry left over from childhood between the two sisters. However, Angelica is often hard to take. She is an ambitious restaurant owner who is now writing her second cookbook. While Angelica is sometimes funny, she is often abrasive, toward other characters and to the reader! For example, she becomes irate when a food coach is given permission to serve food at Founder’s Day because it competes with her restaurant. I think it’s a sign of the self-centered nature of the character to expect that she would be the only one allowed to serve food at the event.

Tricia’s assistant Ginny is supposed to be a good employee as well as friend. Ginny frequently tells Tricia she’s thankful for all she’s done for her, but then whines, complains, and acts extremely ungrateful. I can’t see why Tricia considers Ginny to be such a good friend, but there could be history in prior books that would show more of Ginny’s good qualities. As a new reader to the series, I find her to be an unpleasant character.

Sentenced to Death has a wonderful premise. What book lover wouldn’t want to visit “Booktown”, a village with all different types of bookstores? While I liked the setting, I was disappointed the story didn’t focus more on books. There are a couple references to authors and books, but not as many as I would expect from a book-themed mystery. The author does include two recipes in the back of the book. This doesn’t at first seem to fit the theme of the book, but Angelica is publishing a cookbook, so there is a tie-in to the story.

Tricia is lucky enough to own a mystery bookstore, but seems in very low spirits and is down on herself for much of the book. This gets to be depressing for what should be a light-hearted mystery. Tricia does mention she might need something new in her life, so the author could be setting the stage for some good fortune and more uplifting storylines for Tricia in future books.

There are some unresolved plot points related to the things going on in the town and in the lives of the main characters. I assume these loose ends will be addressed in future installments of the series. Tricia has a potential love-interest for later books and the last chapter ends with promise that the follow-up to this book may have better things in store for Tricia.

The plot was good and the book held my interest to see how the investigation would turn out. I would try other books in this series if the characters were more pleasant to be around and additional information about books would be added to “Booktown”. Fans of Carolyn Hart’s Annie Darling series will like the mystery bookstore theme. 

~ Christine K