Swimsuit Body: A Cypress Bay Mystery

In bestseller Goudge’s suspenseful sequel to 2014’s Bones and Roses, movie megastar Delilah Ward rents a beachfront villa in an exclusive gated community in the Northern California town of Cypress Bay. Tish Ballard, the property manager, thinks that the actress is a spoiled brat when Delilah shows up a day early, unannounced, and trashes the place. Tish views the celebrity more favorably after she unleashes a charm offensive. On a later visit to the villa, Tish discovers Delilah lying on a poolside chaise with a bullet in the back of her head. The grim find is especially traumatic for Tish, who the previous summer stumbled on her own mother’s decomposing body in a storage facility. When Tish’s brother becomes a person of interest in the police investigation, due in part to his history of mental illness, she has added incentive to find Delilah’s killer. Goudge tosses in some romance for her amateur sleuth. This mystery is sure to make fans of darker cozies feel right at home. (June)