This year’s honor roll is killer…
Carpenter Whitney Whitaker and her cousin Buck are no strangers to murder. After all, they’ve encountered corpses on their properties before. But this is the first time they’d decided to take a chance on a property where two suspicious deaths have already occurred. Most buildings on the former boarding school property will be repurposed for an upscale retirement community, but the developer has no use for the headmaster’s house given its violent history. The headmaster and his wife were killed there decades earlier, their deaths remaining unsolved to this day.
Still, it seems a shame to see the beautiful Victorian give way to decay or the wrecking ball, even if many claim the unsettled souls of the victims still wander its halls, seeking retribution and justice. Can Whitney and Buck exorcise the structure’s demons, solve the cold case, and give the building new life? Or will ghosts from the past seek to silence them forever?
Release Date: Apr 1, 2025
Series: House Flipper
Publisher: Macmillan
Imprint: Minotaur Books
Price: $9.99
Whitney Whitaker and her cousin, Buck, flip houses in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Whitney falls in love with a Victorian house that served as the headmaster’s home on the grounds of what was an exclusive boarding school. Whitney has so many ideas on how they could fix this house up, so she and Buck decide to go forward with the project even after learning that two people lost their lives in the home. Whitney begins researching the suspicious deaths, but it quickly becomes clear that someone wants old history to remain in the past. Whitney is determined to protect the reputation of the house, but will she need to fight for her own life in the process?
Dead Post Society is the seventh in the House-Flipper series. I’ve read the two books prior to this one, but not the earlier installments, and think each book works well as a standalone. Each book has a nice balance of remodeling projects, sleuthing, and family life. Readers following the series won’t want to miss a development in Whitney’s personal life that occurs in this one. There are a couple of chapters told from the point of view of Whitney’s cat, Sawdust. They are short and cute without being too corny, adding some fun to the book.
The grounds of the abandoned school make a great setting for the book. I appreciate that Whitney is investigating a cold case in this book, and I enjoyed how she combined research with questioning witnesses and suspects to uncover the truth. I didn’t like that she ignored the good advice from her husband, Collin, and put herself into dangerous situations more than once. More interactions between Whitney and Collin and Whitney and Buck would have made the book even better, but the story held my interest and kept me guessing as to the identity of the killer. Fans of the series, as well as fans of Kate Carlisle’s Fixer Upper Mysteries, will enjoy this intriguing cozy mystery.
~ Christine
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