{"id":5575,"date":"2024-02-28T06:11:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T14:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5575"},"modified":"2024-02-28T06:11:15","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T14:11:15","slug":"katherine-bolger-hyde-hanging-with-hugo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/katherine-bolger-hyde-hanging-with-hugo\/","title":{"rendered":"Katherine Bolger Hyde: Hanging with Hugo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crime with the Classics #6<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Set on the Oregon coast, this charming series features B & B owner Emily, a former professor, and her sheriff husband Luke.\u00a0 In this outing they\u2019ve just returned from their honeymoon and are getting set to host the wedding of Emily\u2019s half-brother Oscar.\u00a0 They feel prepared for the tsunami of family and general chaos brought on by a wedding, but when they return home they find the church where it is to take place has been hit by an actual storm, with massive damage to the roof as well as a beautiful rose window in the nave.\u00a0 The squishy floor and holes in the roof aren\u2019t exactly conducive to the perfect wedding, so Emily, an heiress, donates some money of her own and arranges further financing through the town to get repairs started.<\/p>\n

Their first B & B guests are the stained-glass restorer and family. Baby Raphael scorns clothes and pees just about everywhere and soon the entire household is literally holding their breath until one of the guest cottages opens up so the family have their own space.\u00a0 The next guests \u2013 or rather refugees \u2013 are more heartbreaking.\u00a0 Emily\u2019s priest has asked her to take in Moses and his soon to be adopted daughter, Charlotte, who are fleeing the shelter Moses runs in Portland. A social worker seems to have it in for them, holding up Charlotte\u2019s adoption in favor of the stepfather who abused her and beat her mother.\u00a0 Events have so traumatized her that she cannot speak.<\/p>\n

Emily and Luke reserve judgment about the pair, but when they actually meet gentle Moses, a massive black man, and sweet Charlotte, a budding artist, their doubts evaporate.\u00a0 When it turns out that both baby Raphael\u2019s family and the parents of Emily\u2019s soon to be sister-in-law, Lauren, have had bad encounters with the very same problematic social worker, there is – by all the laws of the mystery novel – an immediate target on the woman\u2019s back.\u00a0 In classic fashion the person everyone has a motive to kill is indeed killed, and this time the suspect pool all seems to be residing in the sheriff\u2019s home. As Luke sets out to check everyone\u2019s alibis, he learns that the errant stepfather has also turned up in town, adding yet another possible murderer.<\/p>\n

The wedding details are fun \u2013 Lauren\u2019s family is Chinese and so there\u2019s a church wedding followed by a Chinese banquet at the house, which makes for a fine finale.\u00a0 The wrap of the story is suspenseful, but gently so, and does involve some solid detective work on the part of Luke and his small team.<\/p>\n

This is a nicely told tale with some great details like cats named Kitty and Levin.\u00a0 The \u2018Hugo’ of the title is Victor Hugo, the author Emily\u2019s friend Marguerite is reading as she waits for the wedding at the B & B.\u00a0 One of the nicer bits of the book is Emily\u2019s bonding with Charlotte throughout the story \u2013 they are truly drawn together when she teaches the girl to knit and Charlotte takes to it like she was born to do it.\u00a0 I really liked the characters and setting, and it did bring a tear to my eye when Moses and Charlotte\u2019s situation was eventually resolved.\u00a0 If the story was slight, the characters felt real to me and I was glad to have met them. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crime with the Classics #6 Set on the Oregon coast, this charming series features B & B owner Emily, a former professor, and her sheriff husband Luke.\u00a0 In this outing they\u2019ve just returned from their honeymoon and are getting set to host the wedding of Emily\u2019s half-brother Oscar.\u00a0 They feel prepared for the tsunami of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1583,1580,1582,1579,1578,1450,1276,486,1581],"class_list":["post-5575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-adoption","tag-crime-with-the-classics","tag-family-wedding","tag-hanging-with-hugo","tag-katherine-bolger-hyde","tag-knitting","tag-robin-agnew","tag-severn-house","tag-stained-glass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5577,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575\/revisions\/5577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}