Invitation To Murder – Meet Lacey Langdon, Willow Bluffs Newest Sleuth!

Lacey Langdon’s return to Willow Bluffs in Invitation to Murder delivers exactly the cozy mystery comfort I was hoping for, then quietly sharpens into something much twistier.

I went in cold and was surprised by how quickly the mix of small-town charm, soap-opera glamour, and murder on the Palisades pulled me in.

The setup feels familiar, but a little on the Hallmark side. So, we have a big-city publicist back home inheriting her mother’s events business, complete with a cute coffee shop, supportive townsfolk, and, of course, she’s always 100% put together and loved by everyone.

That’s not such a bad thing, especially as the book also has a layered investigation and parade of suspects, which turns it into a genuine puzzle rather than just background noise.

As secrets about land deals, old family scandals, and deadly grudges surface, the tone stays light, giving the whole book easy readability that still lets you play detective alongside Lacey.

By the end, I found myself happily picturing this as a Sunday-afternoon TV movie series: Lacey bouncing into Bean Around for her coffee before juggling town events, star clients, and the occasional corpse, all without a hair out of place.

It may not reinvent the cozy wheel, but it delivers exactly what it promises, which is an easy, breezy murder mystery with a heroine I’d gladly follow into book two.

Welcome To Willow Bluffs

Publicist Lacey Langdon’s life implodes when her parents are killed in a car crash in New York, leaving her adrift and grieving.

She returns to her hometown of Willow Bluffs, New Jersey, to take over her mother Isabel’s beloved stationery-and-events shop, Letter Perfect, and moves into the carriage house on the grounds of the grand Eduard Vander Horn estate, now partially owned and occupied by her great-aunt, legendary soap star Tessa Langdon Vander Horn.

As Lacey tries to rebuild her life, the town is buzzing over the sale and subdivision of the historic Vander Horn property, and Lacey’s first big solo assignment is to plan the groundbreaking ceremony.

On the day of the event, Lacey flawlessly manages VIPs, press, and logistics, including handling Tessa’s celebrity presence and a swarm of local and regional media. The celebration screeches to a halt when police chief Paul Hennessey arrives mid-reception and announces that a jogger has discovered a dead body on the banks of the Hudson directly below the estate.

The victim is soon identified as Glenn Hartman, a longtime town councilman and one of the key obstacles to the Vander Horn deal, who was supposedly headed to court that morning on a zoning-related matter.

At the same time, Lacey is pulled into Tessa’s glamorous but high-pressure world. Tessa remains the reigning queen of the long-running soap Edge of Darkness, and as Lacey digs through family memorabilia for story fodder, she uncovers some old secrets that have started rearing their ugly heads in the modern day.

As the past and present start to collide, another death sets everybody on edge, and Lacey decides it’s time to figure out what is really going on and who would want to murder a seemingly decent, everyday hard-working councilman.

Now & Then

Unlike a lot of cozy mysteries that tend to stick to one story to hold everything together, in Invitation to Murder, we get two. And they are very different.

The first is the modern-day setting with a killer on the loose, and the second digs one hundred years into the past and the events that unfolded between Sophie Vander Horn and the love of her life, Sebastian DesChamps, who died at the same location as the councilman.

The book builds layer upon layer of motive, history, and interpersonal drama around land, money, jealousy, secret parentage, and old feuds, until it becomes clear that the two deaths are likely connected to the Vander Horn deal and the hidden rot beneath Willow Bluffs’ picture-perfect façade.

What I will say, though, is that the solving of the mystery isn’t as difficult as some others I’ve read recently. In fact, it was a little bit obvious with heavy-handed hints throughout.

That wouldn’t be an issue if our leading lady had ever picked up on them, but for some reason, despite being a smart and savvy young woman, they just fly straight over her head.

I don’t want to give any spoilers here, but darn it, when a character says the same thing, which also happens to be a major clue, not once, not twice, but three times, and Lacey still doesn’t ‘get it’, then I start to lose hope…and I did a little.

Thumbs Up or Down?

Is Invitation to Murder the greatest cozy mystery I have ever read? No. However, it really was the perfect read for a Sunday morning when I wanted to have some quiet time.

It is the kind of pleasant and inoffensive book that pulls you into a world where somebody can run a highly successful business, zip in and out of Manhattan on a whim, solve a murder, look amazing all the time, and be everybody’s best friend.

If escapism is what you’re after, you’ll find it in Invitation to Murder.

Carol Floriani

Carol Floriani is an American mystery writer whose career has moved fluidly between romance-leaning fiction and traditional whodunits.

Under the pen name Carol Robertson, she wrote A Summer to Remember, and as Carolyn Ross, she published Dancing in the Dark, showcasing her character-driven, emotionally layered storytelling.

Invitation to Murder, released by Crooked Lane Books in May 2026, is the first in her Killer Event Mysteries, so no doubt we will be seeing Lacey Langdon and Willow Bluffs back on our TBR’s very soon.