I was quite lost at the beginning of the story. While the book is part of the Texas Sized Mystery series, they are marketed as being able to read as stand-alones. I feel like I really needed to have known things from other books here. It jumped right into characters and places, and I had no idea who they were and there was no introduction to them.

Once I figured out who was who, and what was what, they story got a lot better. But I still had some problems with it. For one, our victim seems to be a collossal idiot, and his family really didn’t seem to care about him at all. I sort of understand why his wife wouldn’t, but the rest, while putting on displays of sorrow, it didn’t feel real to me. Perhaps because they weren’t allowed to really become more than part of the background scenery instead of real part of the story.

The whole time, the book points to one person as the murderer and paints them in a very unflattering light. I get putting out a false lead or two, but this seemed to derail the entire investigation, and I’m surprised they managed to figure out who really did it because the police didn’t seem to be really looking into anything. Perhaps it’s because this was a shorter story, and there wasn’t enough time to really dive deep into the mystery, but I really expected a bit more.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**