by Cynthia Chow & Maddie Day
This week we have a review of Murder at Cape Costumers By Maddie Day aka Edith Maxwell. We also have a fun Halloween guest post from Edith. You can check out a Halloween mystery short story that Edith wrote for KRL last year by clicking here for even more Halloween fun! Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase it from Amazon.
Murder at Cape Costumers: A Cozy Capers Group Mystery By Maddie Day
Review by Cynthia Chow
It’s Halloween in Westham, Massachusetts, and the streets are filled with tiny superheroes, princesses, and pirates. Mac’s Bikes bicycle rental store owner Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida is happy to see the influx of new business and businesses, which includes the new costume boutique Cape Costumes. Tony-winning Broadway wardrobe designer Shelly Hitchcock has just opened her high-end costume store partnered with Hanini Whitt, and the two women hope to keep their shop running year-round by catering to sports teams, theater actors, and ballerinas. When resident Enzo Lawrence is later discovered dead on his patio wearing the skeleton costume Mac had seen him wearing much earlier, she knows that she and her Cozy Capers book group will have a new case to solve.
Having a retired police chief in their group helps them to have a little inside information, but the current Westham Police Chief Victoria Laitinen vehemently warns them, and Mac specifically, to stay out of her investigation. This hampers the Cozy Capers a bit, but by questioning their own relatives and fellow business owners they learn enough clues to have them questioning new arrivals and Enzo’s friends and family. Newly married Mac and her husband Tim are in the early stages of starting a family, but the arrival of his troubled sister Jamie and her children will keep them more than distracted. When Jamie goes missing, leaving Mac and Tim to care for baby Luca and three-and-a-half-year old Ella, the couple gets an accelerated course in childcare and parenthood. Raised in a mixed-race blended family herself, the African-Portuguese-Caucasian Mac finds herself slightly overwhelmed but embracing this unexpected situation.
In a forward to this seventh in the series, author Maddie Day writes that she was inspired by reading a new article in the Boston Globe. She warns readers who don’t want to be spoiled to not look up the story, which of course I immediately did because that’s me. Reading about the outrageous true event still didn’t prevent me from being completely surprised by the solution to the novel, although I would also recommend readers wait until they’ve finished the novel before satisfying their curiosity.
Emotionally, these characters have gone through so much that their personal dramas are just as, if not more, compelling than the main mystery, which itself is still more than enough to draw in new fans and keep them riveted to the page. The Halloween setting allows for the murder to be carried out in a creative and unique fashion, making this an entertaining read for those who love the spooky season. The book club group will intrigue book lovers looking for new title suggestions as well, ensuring that this is the perfect read for cozy, foodie, Halloween-obsessed bibliophiles.
How Spooky Should It Be?
By Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day
A couple of years ago, my editor asked if I’d like to write a Halloween book. I’ve done Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter holiday stories, plus one involving summer fireworks. I’d never written a mystery set at the Halloween season. Darkness and costumes and mischief? Readers, I said yes.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. My birthday is two days later, so half the time my childhood birthday parties were also costume parties. I didn’t mind.
I love dressing up in costumes, and for a number of years, as an adult, I threw an annual costume party. I have a black wig I often bring out for various costumes.
The New England Crime Bake conference encourages attenders to dress to the theme of the guest of honor for the Saturday night banquet. I always go all in! The year Charlaine Harris was our GOH, Sherry Harris, Liz Mugavero (aka Cate Conte), and I got into the spirit of the Vampire Ball (plus a writer whose name escapes me).
Another year, author Cheryl Hollon went as Hercule Poirot, and I made a stab at Phryne Fisher.
Somewhere I have photos of the costumes I made for my sons when they were young. I created a baby tiger, a red-winged blackbird for my older son, a genie for the younger one (when the Alladin movie came out), a Harry Potter (of course), a monk, a Theodore Roosevelt, and a clown, among others.
My most recent Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery, Murder at Cape Costumers, came out in late August. It’s the seventh in the series of stories that take place in fictional Westham on upper Cape Cod. Bike shop owner Mac Almeida and her Cozy Capers book group sometimes never get to the cozy mystery of the week because they’re too busy investigating murder. And this book opens a few days before Halloween.
When I was researching Halloweens of a hundred years ago for my 1926 short story, “Unmasked” (published right here in KRL last October-you can read it here), the festivities were darker and more dangerous than they tend to be today. The holiday has a history of intermingled customs relating to the dead from pagan times and Christianity, including the Danse Macabre and wearing the costumes of those who had “crossed the dark river,” as dying was described in old New England. And you can imagine the trouble caused by masked characters making startling noises and carrying lit torches around in the dark at a time when shooting a gun into the air was a sign of celebration.
How spooky did I want to make my story? I write gentle mysteries, after all, both contemporary and historical. In Murder at Cape Costumers, Mac’s Bikes and the other Main Street shops are decorated with pumpkins, black plastic spiders, and playful ghosts. Bowls of candy are everywhere. Mac’s visiting three-year-old niece goes trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. In other words, a modern suburban Halloween experience that is cozy in all ways.
Except that experience doesn’t hint at murder, suspense, and suspects, and those are required even in a cozy mystery. I came up with the idea of a costume shop featuring high-quality outfits, not cheap nylon garb. The woman who runs it created costumes on Broadway, her gentleman friend is a former actor, and her business partner was a professional dancer, also in New York.
Dark things ensue after Enzo is found dead, even as the book remains a village-based, character-driven mystery. Mac picks up tension and a hidden history between the business owners. A mysterious adult nephew of the victim shows up in town. A financial advisor down on his luck acts suspiciously. An inmate of the correctional facility where Mac volunteers in the prison library hints to a wrongdoing by the costume shop owner––except Mac doesn’t know which one.
In the story, I added a life-sized (and moving) skeleton in the front window of Cape Costumers plus a ghoulish police officer. I was still writing the book when my editor sent along the finished cover art. They’d included the skeleton and the police officer, but when the cover included a big, slightly scary lobster, you can bet that costume went straight into the story.
There’s a subplot of Mac’s visiting sister-in-law going missing. Was she the second victim of Enzo’s murderer? Why did she leave her little children and not return, and where is she now? I resolve the mystery by the end of the book, but it complicates the main investigation along the way.
I held the line in this Halloween book at adding costumed characters brandishing burning torches and loaded guns, you’ll be glad to know! And I realized that, unlike me, Mac hates costumes and refuses to wear one when she goes to the Cozy Capers party on Halloween night. Her only concession is to wear an orange silk scarf with a black shirt.
Readers: Do you have a favorite Halloween costume––yours or someone else’s?
Just in time for Halloween, a new costume shop has opened on Main Street in Westham, Massachusetts. Cape Costumers is a cut above the usual seasonal pop-up stores with their flimsy mass-produced outfits and cheap plastic masks, mostly due to co-owner Shelly, a former Broadway costume designer. But when someone discovers Shelly’s elderly boyfriend Enzo—a Broadway star who retired to Westham—dead of unnatural causes, Halloween suddenly gets a lot scarier.
Sleuthing, bike shop owner Mac Almeida has found, is a lot like riding a bicycle: once you learn how, you never forget. Far from being spooked, Mac and the members of the Cozy Capers Book Group put down their weekly book selection and put their heads together to see past a bag of tricks and find a malice-making murderer who’s hiding in plain sight . . .
You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.
To enter to win a copy of Murder at Cape Costumers, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “Cape Costumers” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen October 18, 2025. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.
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Love the cover! Looks like a great read.
My favorite was a mouse costume which my brother wore 7 years later, then my sister a couple of years after that. Of course, I was the only one without a photo.
It sounds like a really interesting book. Thank you for sharing.
My favorite was a mouse costume which got handed down to my younger siblings. I’m the only one without a photo.
Thanks for the chance! tWarner419@aol.com
This looks so good. The favorite costume was one my mom made—Little Red Riding Hood. legallyblonde1961@yahoo.com
My favorite costume was a grey bear that my mother put together except for a bear mask we purchased. I was in elementary school and our little country school would take part in the Halloween parade in our little town. I won first place from our school as the best girl costume. Our prizes were silver doll ARD and I still have mine.
We have a winner!