This story takes place in the little boutique town of Hardington, MA. The town is under the spell of a televised home improvement program called Ultimate House Makeover. The show is hosted by the flashy star—Whit Dakota. While Liz Phillips, chair of the Hardington Garden Club, is setting up the landscaping for the new house, a body is discovered in a trunk of spare tent parts. The body belongs to the town selectman who was in charge of the volunteers for the project, and Liz is commandeered to replace him.
Detective John Flynn of the Hardington Police Force is charged with solving the crime. Although both Liz and John are married to other people, a bit of romantic tension hovers throughout the book as the two work together. Sanders adds some interesting touches, such as the fact that there is a famous New England Patriots quarterback named Tom Snipes living in Hardington. That pseudo-famous identification brings out an interesting aspect of the bad guy in the story, Whit Dakota, who demands to play catch with the famous star to promote his own reputation.
Sanders develops the plot well—starting out slowly, with Detective Flynn trying to put the pieces together and sort through multiple suspicious characters.
Liz Phillips, meanwhile, comes across what seems to be a wholly unrelated crime that paints a seamier side of the home makeover TV phenomena. It seems like an interesting but irrelevant plot development until Sanders brings the plots and the Liz and John stories together. That was a gratifying and pleasant surprise.
Sanders provides depth and color to his characters and is able to provide flavor to the town of Hardington, its location in Massachusetts, and the reality show industry. Suspects develop from the complexities of normal human relationships: lawyers, gardeners, volunteers, and filmmakers. And all of that happens before the family around whom all this is evolving comes back to the town and the story.
Amazon has this listed under Mystery, Thriller, Suspense. The mystery and suspense work, but the thriller category doesn’t fit, but it is a good read with an intriguing plot structure.