Kate Hamilton left her hometown of Asheboro, MD, but after working for a large hotel, Kate is laid off when the hotel she managed is bought by a hotel chain. Kate has returned home only to find that the little town is nearly bankrupt and needing a plan to revitalize. Kate takes on the job of developing a plan to bring the town back to its former glory.but as usual trouble seems to be in abundance.

There is a murder, of course, but it doesn't seem to be the center of the story. The majority of the book centers around the search for Henry Barton's papers which would hopefully fund the revitalization of the town.

I will look for the next in the series, hoping that there is more of a mystery and a little to do lists. ( )

Kate has been coerced into trying to save her hometown from fading away. Her vision is to recreate the town as it was nearly a century ago, as a tourist attraction. But first, she has to get the townspeople to agree, and she has to find a way to fund it. The characters are engaging, and the story line of saving the town is quite interesting, but as a mystery, it falls a bit short. There is a body, an apparent murder victim, that turns up after about 75 pages, but solving the circumstances of the death never seems to be the focus of the story. Most of the book centers on Kate and her plans, and finding the old documents that would support her theories. The solution to the death is covered in less than than two pages and what mystery there is, is over and done with in the blink of an eye. The book continues with a town meeting, explaining Kate’s vision. An interesting tale but hardly a real mystery. ( )

Killer in the Carriage House is the second book in A Victorian Village Mystery series. It can be read alone for those who are new to this series. Kate Hamilton lost her job when a big conglomerate took over the hotel where she worked. Her friend, Lisbeth Scott asks her to return to Asheboro and come up with a plan to save the dying town. Kate’s idea is to turn the town into a Victorian village after seeing the Henry Barton mansion. However, it will take a massive amount of planning, money and help to pull it off. Money is something that is in short supply after the banker embezzled the town funds. Kate is hoping Henry Barton’s papers will be a help and gets assistance from Josh Wainwright and Carroll Peterson. I like that we are introduced to some of the townspeople like Mayor Skip Bentley, Frances who owns the newspaper, Ted the diner owner, and Mr. MacDonald with his hardware store. Killer in the Carriage House is a slow starter with a sluggish pace. I thought the mystery was light. The dead body is found after I was a quarter of the way through the book and is barely addressed after that point. Identifying the killer is a piece of cake and the resolution was lacking. Kate has great ideas for the town with no idea on how to execute them. She is also a procrastinator. Kate keeps putting off things she needs to accomplish (even going to the grocery store). She should be looking into funding, building codes, talking to towns people and doing research. Instead, Kate devotes her time to the Barton papers. Henry Barton does sound like a fascinating man and I am sure there is more to discover about him. I like the inclusion of Nell Pratt in the story from A Museum Mystery series. A Victorian Village Mystery series is a concept that I think is charming and I enjoyed Murder at the Mansion. Killer in the Carriage House, though, was lacking which is unusual for Sheila Connolly. I am curious to see what Kate and her friends uncover in the next A Victorian Village Mystery. ( )

Killer In The Carriage House is the second book in the Victorian Village Mystery series.

Kate Hamilton is still concerned if she can turn her hometown of Asheboro, MD into a Victorian village, in hopes of attracting enough tourists, thereby, preventing the town from becoming a complete ghost town. The finding of letters from Clara Barton to her cousin, Henry Barton an industrialist in Asheboro, is one big step in getting the project headed in the right direction. Kate has contacted her friend in Philadelphia, Nell Pratt, about getting somebody to help sort the remaining items found in the attic of Henry Barton’s mansion. Nell arranges for Carroll Peterson to come help with the sorting.

Kate stops by the library, where she plans to store the papers and where Carroll will be working, to plan where everything will be placed to facilitate the sorting. As she is about to head to the Barton mansion, a young man comes to the door telling Kate that he wants to do some family research. When she explains that the library is closed due to the fact that they are without a librarian, he leaves.

The next day Kate and Carroll arrive at the library to go over where they will store the items and find that a window has been broken and a set of bookshelves has been turned over and under the bookshelves is the body of the young man that Kate had met the day before. The sorting has to be shelved for a couple of days while Detective Reynolds and his crime scene crew search for clues to verify if it was murder or an accident. This gives Kate and Carroll a chance to walk around town, wanting to confirm that will be viable to restore the buildings to their Victorian-era appearance. Also, they are also considering what can be done to restore the building that had housed Barton’s shovel factory. Josh is especially keen on this project. Josh has been acting as a caretaker at the Barton mansion while he is on sabbatical from Johns Hopkins University where his area of specialty is nineteenth-century industrialization studies.

There are two people that arrive in town around the time that the victim had and Kate, Carroll, and Josh all begin to wonder whether this is a coincidence or not. The first is Alison. Josh is acquainted with Alison having met her at a few conferences they both had attended. Alison claims to be researching urban history and needs Josh’s help with this. The other is Eric, who is a college friend of Ryan and claims to be interested in the Civil War and is visiting various battle sites in the area.

Hopefully, they will be able to find the killer before any more deaths occur and Kate will be able to get the citizens to embrace her project and contribute their own or their families memories when it was a viable community. Kate visited the publisher of the newspaper, Frances, and found an interesting article that may solve many mysteries if they can only find the original papers before anyone else does.

I found this book to be a very well-written and interesting story and very interesting and believable characters. There were enough red herrings that I was kept guessing until the end of the book.

I am anxiously awaiting the next book in this great series. ( )

I can hardly believe that this is only the second book in the series. The first book, Murder At The Mansion, did such a phenomenal job of setting up the characters and the backstory that you feel as if, in this book, you are coming home and visiting with old friends and places. The overarching background story concerns Asheboro, Maryland – a very small town that has gotten lost in the migration to larger cities. The only industry has closed down and the younger people are all moving to the larger cities for work. This leaves the town with few residents and no money to sustain itself. In a desperate, last-ditch effort to save the town, they are looking are re-making the town into a Victorian Village in the vein of colonial Williamsburg, VA.

Kate Hamilton is busily trying to figure out how to convince the town merchants to rip out all of the modernization in their storefronts and change them back to their original Victorian configuration. Most of the changes from the last hundred years has been superficial and left the original structures intact. She also needs to find another tourist draw to the village and is hoping to find that in the remainder of the Henry Barton papers. In the last book, they found valuable and historic letters to Henry from Clara Barton, but that won’t be enough to draw tourists to their town. So, they are hoping that there will be additional historical documents of significance in Henry’s papers. Those things are very, very important because the town doesn’t have the money for any of the projects and if something of importance and value isn’t found, the town will just wither and die. So Kate has her hands full.

As Kate, Josh and Carroll ready the documents from the Barton mansion to the town library, Kate has a young man drop in at the closed library asking to visit the family section of the library. Kate tells him that the library is temporarily closed because they don’t have a librarian and that he’ll have to ask permission from the town leaders before he can come in. The young man leaves and Kate soon locks up and leaves the library. When she returns the following day with her friend Carroll, it is to discover the body of the young man who had just visited the day before.

Kate calls Detective Reynolds of the State Police and tells him what has happened. Nobody knows who the young man is – and his death wasn’t natural or accidental. Kate and company try to leave the murder investigation to Detective Reynolds while they focus on the documents – but – things keep happening that lead them to believe that the murder is somehow associated with the documents and they begin to wonder if there aren’t more documents stored somewhere else. What other secrets could there be? Is there something that would garner the town the money it needs to save itself? What was the young man looking for? Who could have killed him and why?

This is a fun read with excellent mysteries – murder and other. I also liked the introduction of the historical and research information included because it made the scenarios very believable. All-in-all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I can’t wait for the next book.

I’ve read other series by the author and she seems to bring any romance elements into it very slowly – much to my dismay. I love a good mystery, but it also needs to have a good, strong romance element in it for me. So far, the romance in this series is tenuous and I’m getting antsy about it. Is Josh the one? The real, strong connection doesn’t seem to be there so far. Is it Ryan? Unlikely, but possible. Someone else? Who knows. I’m ready for it to be settled.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. ( )