In a place this perfect, nobody dies of anything interesting.

Havenmere Country Club runs on manners, money, and the collective agreement never to look too closely at anything, including the alligator living in the water hazard on fourteen. Everyone loves Barry. The Gator Guys have been called out four times. Barry remains undefeated.

Eighty-four-year-old Sylvia Stern has spent thirteen winters here and missed nothing. So when Celeste Davenport, who has ruled Havenmere's social order for a decade, drops dead days after lifting a glass of champagne she never touches, Sylvia is the only one asking why a woman with a documented heart condition was drinking at all.

Everyone else is satisfied. The club is relieved. The gossip has already moved on to the Winter Gala centerpieces.

Armed with a spiral notebook her late husband called her murder book and a best friend, Arlene, who has never once minded her own business, Sylvia starts pulling on a thread the whole community would rather she left alone. Her investigating partner Roz Kaufman keeps the theories organized. Detective Nikki Morales keeps telling them both to stop. Neither Sylvia nor Barry is inclined to listen.

Because a heart attack asks nothing of anyone. Murder asks quite a lot.

Welcome to Havenmere. Mind the alligator.

Book One in the Havenmere Mysteries, a series of dark-comic cozy mysteries for readers who like their murder served with a side of Florida absurdity. For readers of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey, with the warmth and wit of Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club.