Murder Runs in the Family by Tamara Berry was published in April 2025. It’s the first in the Seven Ponds Retirement Community cozy mystery series; book two is scheduled for release in fall 2026.
Our Sleuth: Amber Winslow, 31, has ditched her boyfriend of three years and fled to her grandmother’s retirement home. Amber has been an apprentice PI to her boyfriend, Bones, but he’s refused to sign the paperwork that would get Amber her own license. With nowhere else to go, she runs to the flamboyant grandmother, 76, she’s never met.
The Setting: We’re at the Seven Ponds Retirement Community in the fictional town of Draycott, Arizona, present day. The author describes Seven Ponds as “a desert oasis that looked like a luxury Palm Springs getaway.”
The Premise: Amber is the wandering eccentric in a family of gainfully employed college graduates. When things go south with her boyfriend, she doesn’t want another lecture. She seeks out the grandmother she’s only heard wild rumors about, the one who seems more like Amber than anyone else. But not long after Amber tracks Jade (not her real name) McCallin down in her retirement community, the older woman is arrested for murder.
My Take: This is a fun and well-written cozy that incorporates lots of popular tropes cropping up in recently published mysteries: a retirement community setting, multi-generational characters in Amber and Jade, the inclusion of a crime podcast. Oh, and an adorable pet, in this case a 98-year-old tortoise named Tatiana. But there’s heart here too, as the veteran author delves into the family relations that have kept Amber and her grandmother strangers for decades. As much as Amber adores the exciting Jade, particularly after fighting with her Bible-thumping mother, she also comes to understand how Jade’s antics have contributed to the family’s dysfunction. I enjoyed watching Amber mature over the course of a mystery that ended in a surprise I didn’t see coming. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for book two.
Opening lines:
As Amber Winslow stepped down from the city bus, everything she owned in the tattered backpack slung over her shoulder, she had one thought and one thought only: Man, I wish I was old.
She’d seen retirement communities before, of course. Usually in the pages of a sleek brochure or on billboards edged with graffiti, the faces of the residents wreathed in smiles as they lounged poolside, ate chef-prepared meals, and visited doctors who only had good news to share. As was the case with most advertisements, she’d assumed they were one big corporate lie. No one was that happy to visit a doctor, especially when their organ functions had been in decline for years.
But this place? Well … she was starting to rethink that whole your-thirties-are-the-best-decade-of-your-life thing.
Heads Up: No triggers here as befits a cozy.
Etc.: Author Tamara Berry has written two previous cozy mystery series, the Edgar Award-winning By the Book series and the paranormal Eleanor Wilde series. As Lucy Gilmore, she also writes what she describes as humorous romance and book club fiction.
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