by Carol Pouliot
Published by Level Best Books
Cover art by Level Best Books
Wow! Gee, Carol Pouliot’s first offerings, Doorway to Murder, Threshold of Deceit and Death Rang the Bell are swell but RSVP to Murder is Aces. She just keeps getting better and better as she skilfully blends cozy police procedural and science fiction.
Pouliot’s timing in creating the Blackwell and Watson time-travel mystery series is pure perfection. Each episode not only sparks the imagination they rekindle baby-boomer generation memories. The subtlety and care with which she paints the word pictures brilliantly portrays history, mystery and love.
Olivia Watson, a 21st-century journalist, has discovered her house possesses a very special quirk, a fold in the space/time continuum situated within the doorway of her bedroom. She needs only take Steven’s hand and step across its threshold to Journey back in time to 1934, to a time of the dust bowl of the “Dirty Thirties”, the invention of the atom bomb, the emergence of Adolf Hitler, Babe Ruth’s farewell to baseball, the “Great Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal", and the first appearance of Donald Duck. It was a time of despair and a time of hope.
It is the Christmas season and Olivia and Steven have been invited to a holiday party at the Adirondack Great Camp of a wealthy newspaper publisher and patron of Steven Blackwell’s late mother’s art. This will be a true test, could Olivia travel back to 1934, drive to a location nearly one hundred miles from the security of Steven’s and her house then spend the night? It seems a risky undertaking. Perhaps it’s a step too far.
The merrymakers find themselves snowed in by a relentless winter storm. Tension builds as the festive gathering swirls with ominous undercurrents of grave transgressions and it becomes apparent that one of them is a murderer.
The dynamic duo of Blackwell and Watson join forces once again to apprehend the killer.
Olivia is, once again, confronted with an unexpected life-and-death dilemma. Will her and Steven’s secret be revealed?
Carol Pouliot is brilliant at creating a sense of realism so powerful you will feel the icy wind as it stings your face and take pleasure in the downy of feathery snowflakes as they tickle your nose. She truly is a master of her craft.
“RSVP to Murder” will capture your interest and hold you spellbound from the beginning to its shocking conclusion. Carol Pouliot has risen to the challenge and without a doubt, taken the genre to a new level. I can’t wait to discover where Olivia’s and Steven’s adventures in time travel take them not to mention what new mystery the dynamic duo will be embroiled in.