Mother-Daughter Murder Night
A Novel
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4.0 • 665 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
Nothing brings a family together like a murder next door.
“I just loved how intriguing the mystery is but also the dynamics between a grandmother, a mother, and a teenage daughter." —Reese Witherspoon
Think: Gilmore Girls, but with murder.
High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does.
Then Jack—tiny in stature but fiercely independent—happens upon a dead body while kayaking. She quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power.
With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they’ve always resisted: depend on each other.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In Nina Simon’s lighthearted mystery debut, three generations of independent women join forces to solve a murder. L.A. real estate bigwig Lana Rubicon is staying with her daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack while getting cancer treatment. But things take a turn when Jack finds a dead body in the river…and becomes a murder suspect. Now, in order to clear Jack’s name, Beth and Lana must put aside their testy relationship and draw on the days of Beth’s youth when they bonded over endless hours of Columbo. Simon keeps the pace breezy and the humor brisk, even as the suspense ramps up. Plus, the wonderfully drawn dynamics between all three women feel relatable and real.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three women bond while investigating a homicide in Simon's spirited debut. Lana Rubicon and her 17-year-old daughter, Beth, become estranged when Beth gets pregnant and relocates five hours north of Los Angeles to raise her baby alone. Fifteen years later, Lana is a high-powered L.A. real estate developer, and Beth is a nurse who shares a humble cottage in Elkhorn Slough with her now-teenage daughter, Jack. Though Lana has always refused to visit Beth and Jack's "shack about to fall into a mud pit," she moves in while undergoing treatment for cancer. Four months of cohabitation do nothing to curb her feelings of uselessness and alienation from her daughter and granddaughter, however. Then, a kayak tour led by Jack comes across naturalist Ricardo Cruz's floating corpse. Racist local police target Jack—who's half Filipino on her father's side—based on the flimsy testimony of one of her clients, and Lana resolves to exonerate her granddaughter and reconnect with Beth in the process. Simon stocks her layered plot with plausibly motivated suspects and convincing red herrings, but it's her indomitable female characters and their nuanced relationships that give this mystery its spark. Readers will be delighted.
Customer Reviews
Complicated!
The four stars are for admiration about the writing.
I grew to be very fond of the characters and their developing stories. Jack and Lana, especially, will stay in my mind for a very long time.
For anyone interested in bays, rivers, streams, sloughs, land use, geography, etc., this book would be fascinating. But I didn’t understand a word of that aspect of the story.
The whodunnit swung cleverly back-and-forth and all around, but this book is over-long.
Mother-Daughter Murder Night
This is not a book. It’s more like a chapter out of a book. No story, no plot, nothing!
I do not recommend
Weak story, poorly told.