Review: Shroud of Roses: A Cornwall and Redfern Mystery by Gloria Ferris

Title: Shroud of Roses
Author: Gloria Ferris
Pages: Paperback 392
Published: June 15, 2015
Genre: Mystery &Thrillers, Women's Fiction
Review: Ebook

The Class of 2000 held one final party in the old gym before the high school was abandoned and boarded up. At midnight, the school emptied for the last time. Or so everyone believed. Fifteen years later, the building is finally scheduled for demolition. As a salvage team sweeps the halls for anything of value, they discover a woman's skeleton curled up in a locker with a hole in the left temple. Lockport's Chief of Police, Neil Redfern, is called in to investigate. When Redfern learns that Bliss Moonbeam Cornwall, his new girlfriend and the town's resident troublemaker, also graduated that fateful year, he reveals other details of the grisly discovery. Cornwall insists she knows who his victim is, but before any headway can be made in the case, another former classmate turns up dead. Could the two murders be connected? Bliss's unconventional methods and penchant for getting into trouble may jeopardize both the investigation and her relationship before she's finished.

I received this book via NetGalley to give an honest review.

I love characters who are witty, smart aleck, mouthy and funny.

When I read the blurb I didn't expect one of the main characters to have me laughing at her ways. Bliss is dating the local chief of police and she likes to insert herself into the field of police work. Bliss is a character you can't help but like and want more of. 

The story starts out where in an old gym a body is discovered while police are trying to figure out who that person is another person dies. Are the two connected? Will there be more murders? Will the police chief listen to Bliss and get information from her as she has background on the town and the people there. 

While Redfern is trying to solve the murders with the help of his police officers and an old friend named Tony, Bliss is inserting herself into the investigation by asking people who were there the night of the graduation party. But it seems she may be in the cross hairs of the killer, and will she be saved in time or to late?  Bliss and Redfern have to juggle their relationship along with trying to solve the murders that are happening. 

This was a great and funny story to read. I do want to read more of Bliss and solve more crimes. 

Canadian author, Gloria Ferris, began her writing career by writing and editing operating procedures for a nuclear power development. It was an exciting job, but opportunities for plot and character development were limited. So she turned to crime fiction and found it to be a lot more fun. Her first paranormal mystery novel, Cheat the Hangman, was a finalist in the 2009 Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged Arthur contest. It was published by Imajin Books in August 2011. In 2012, this novel won a new Canadian literary award for feel-good mysteries, nicknamed the Bony Blithe Award, presented at the Bloody Words Conference, Toronto, ON June 3.

The award is for a “book that makes us smile,” which includes everything from laugh-out-loud, to gentle humour, to good old fashioned stories with little violence or gore.
Her second mystery, Corpse Flower, went the distance and won the 2010 Unhanged Arthur Award and was published by Dundurn Press.
Gloria moved back to her native Guelph in 2008 after spending 20 plus years in several small towns by Lake Huron which inspired the setting for her mysteries. The stories are written in a humorous style, but the crimes are deadly serious.