The Gator Did It

Book five in the Southern Beach Cozy mystery series set on Sophia Island off the Northeast coast of Florida. New to the South and new to living in a beach town, Jewel Mantelle, with their new empty nest, is looking to help her marriage. When her husband inherits an old house in the historic downtown area of an old Florida island she thinks a move is a great idea! Now she's lived there almost a year and her marriage isn't much better, but she's finally feeling at home. However... she's never lived through football season in the South.

Football is a whole other thing in the South, Midwestern transplant Jewel Mantelle discovers, and on Sophia Island, they love the Gators. Jewel would be fine with that if her friends only meant the University of Florida football team, but they also seem to love the critters skulking around in the ditches and creeks running through their tiny beach town. At her first ever football party she finds herself front and center for the spectacle of the eccentric Bell Jackson calling the gators behind his huge mansion-and it gives her the creeps.

But finding out those very same gators didn't hesitate to take a bite of a Sophia Islander when he fell off his balcony and landed in their domain is even creepier.

Did he fall? Was he pushed? Everyone's connected in a small town, and Jewel's lunch bunch friends are all more on edge than usual, afraid their loved ones will be implicated in the death.

Admittedly, it's hard to concentrate on solving that mystery with the rash of burglaries hitting the island. When Jewel's own house is targeted, she finds herself confiding in someone with a little more distance from the action-her estranged husband, Craig.

In this invitingly cozy beachfront mystery, football might be the safest game on Sophia Island