Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Corpse at Captain’s Seat
SERIES: Secrets and Scrabble
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
NARRATOR: Matt Haynes
PUBLISHER: JustJoshin Publishing
LENGTH: 5 hours and 50 minutes
RELEASE DATE: August 14, 2024
BLURB:
And Then There Were…Some
At long last, the renovations of stately Captain’s Seat are mostly complete!
To celebrate, mystery bookseller and sometimes amateur sleuth Ellery Page decides to throw a house-warming party and invite his New York theater friends to stay for the weekend. When a freak snowstorm leaves the house party cut off from the village of Pirate’s Cove, there’s nothing to do but drink, reminisce, and play games.
Or so Ellery thinks—until he finds himself trapped in a real-life game of Clue.
REVIEW:
NOTE: This is the eighth book in this series and contains spoilers for the previous books. Each story begins after the previous book and the characters and the relationships build from one book to the next. I recommend listening to them in order 🙂
Poor Ellery. He’s looking forward to a weekend with his college friends who he hasn’t seen in years. They were all together at Tisch and have gone their separate ways. Ellery is happy in Pirate’s Cove with Jack, despite the murders that have happened. He and Jack are in a good place. He’s having a housewarming party at the Captain’s Seat on the same weekend. Except now there is a snow storm and they are stuck at the house. Jack has had to go to work and stay in town given the potential for emergencies. Oh and there is an escaped axe-murdering mental patient who was headed for the island as well.
Turns out that Ellery’s friends are not as friendly as Ellery remembered. Some of them are more successful than others. Freddy and Oscar have gone to the West Coast for their work. Flip and Lenny and Tosh and Chelsea are still on the East Coast. One friend is in England and ends up missing the reunion. Then there is their friend Noah who was killed in a hit and run back when they were in school. While looking at old photos that Tosh has brought alone, things get a bit tense. Then there is the fact the Chelsea seems to be trying to copy Tosh’s – well – everything. And she’s always had a thing for Freddy who just happens to be Tosh’s ex-husband. But they were over years ago and are still friends.
Everyone is at the house and Ellery is being the host with the most. Jack arrives after dinner thanks to the axe-murderer situation. But he finally meets Ellery’s friends. He does notice the tension and also the weird “copycat” thing that Chelsea seems to be doing. At the end of the day, they seem to be enjoying time together well enough. Ellery is sure he closed the door to the secret passageway in the Library though and when they return, it was open. Hmmmm. Then the pictures that Tosh brought from their college days disappear. Ellery finds them, and puts them away for safekeeping.
With all the snow, everyone joins in a snowball fight 🙂 Things seem to be going well enough after a game night. Until Ellery is awakened by a scream.
Oh my! Nothing worse than an Agatha Christie style murder in a house full of old friends. Some with secrets and some with theories. And the Police Chief is stuck in town. And the body is one of the friend. Yikes!!! Ellery has to try to help Jack by interviewing his friends. That goes about as well as expected. Clearly someone is lying. But how are they going to catch the killer and hold onto the until Jack gets home?? Well that takes a little ingenuity. Watson is, of course, his usual helpful self – running off when called, jumping at snowballs, being a footwarmer, etc. Jack is his usual worried self about Ellery who seems to find himself in these crazy circumstances all the time. Luckily Ellery and Jack do manage to get to the bottom of the situation 😉
Matt Haynes does a great job in continuing his outstanding narration of this series. Ellery is always ending up in a situation that he has to explain to Jack. This time Jack knows he didn’t go looking for anything and in fact, JACK is the one looking for trouble. It finds them both before he really gets anywhere. There are a lot of voices here and they are definitely distinctive. I once again love Watson! This series is a delight and I hope someday we will get more stories 🙂 Highly recommended.
RATING: 
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