This is book 4 in the Discount Detective Mystery Series. Cameron is fitting in with her colleagues at the Penny Wise Agency. Quick paced dialogue, and the banter between Yuri and Cameron lighten a plot that could have veered into horror. Students who are reenacting a sacrificial Moon are stunned when the mock sacrifice becomes very real. Tilly, the planned 'sacrifice' disappears, replaced with a corpse. The other thread of this twisty plot involve the Green Ladies, eco feminists who push the limits of activism. Many red herrings combined with a good sense of setting, characterization and plot create a winner that also works as a stand alone.
Well done.

A working single mom with a job that is interesting but a tad dangerous. She is a private eye. The office has several employees which makes it different from so many books I have read. Tilly is to be the sacrificial person in a reenactment. But she has to be drugged. Cameron and her co-worker are hired to keep her safe. Then things go sideways and she disappears. Interesting storyline.

Clara Ramsey is concerned about her niece Tilly has agreed to become a sacrifice at a ceremony during the next full moon. Cameron & her partner Yuri from Pennywise Investigations follow Tilly & the Full Moon Society members to a forested park outside Seattle where the drugged Tilly is carried to a nearby cave. To their surprise, Cameron & Yuri lose sight of Tilly & instead find the stabbed body of the society's leader & her boyfriend Runa on a stone altar. A few days later, Clara frantically tells them that Tilly has been kidnapped. Cameron & Yuri manage to rescue Tilly from another male member's home & reunites her with Clara. But the police consider Tilly the prime murder suspect. Tilly's involvement with an all-women climate change group puts her in further peril when an explosion at a large downtown protest leads to chaos & mass arrests. Links between the two incidents start to form and Cameron figures out the likely culprit. This was a soft-boiled PI story with a good balance between Cameron's professional cases & personal life as a widowed mother raising two tweens.

I received a digital ARC from Netgalley and BooksGoSocial/Walrus Press. All opinions are my own.

This was the first I read in this series and won't be the last as I enjoyed it.
It's well plotted, Charlotte is a likeable characters, and the plot kept me guessing.
It's the 4th in this series but it can be read as a stand alone.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I was originally going to give this 4/5, with a personal enjoyment of 3.5. I didn't realize this was the fourth book in the series (something I really wish Netgalley would note better) and this isn't the type of series where I can just pick one book up and not be confused. It (rightfully) assumes I know the characters so you don't really get a big introduction to people, and I had a very hard time keeping track of everyone alongside the story - but that's on me, not the series, and I'm sure people who have actually read the other books will be pleased.

Where this gets a point off for me, however, and lowered my rating was a line when the main character Cameron thinks to herself that she was too rude to an officer when he apologizes for the fact that she got arrested. There's an entire thing about how if the roles were reversed she wouldn't react well to people screaming at her and that policing is beyond one person's experiences, and that it's hard to see that beyond your own emotions. On a base level statement, I completely agree that policing issues are beyond one person's experiences. However, when applied here, it just didn't make sense. The women were screaming at the police, so that makes it understandable that they then kicked our main character's ribs and refused to listen to her when she tried to explain she wasn't with them, and continued not to, all the way through the station when the danger had passed? That's not a "two-sides" issue, she SHOULD be rightfully mad about that, and it's disheartening to see that because the love interest is a cop this is treated as if you should sympathize. These are cops, part of the job description comes with needing to de-escalate these situations. The main character may not react well if she were on the other side of things, but that is why she is NOT a cop; they ARE and they reacted poorly.

There's also a line where we get an offhand "maybe [the killer] also has medications for a mental disorder that they're not taking" thought from our main character. I'm so sick of detective type stories indicating that someone committing crimes are also mentally ill, and this increasing trend of our mains just assuming this offhandedly with no actual evidence. These stories rarely ever have main characters who are also mentally ill, or sympathize with mentally ill people, or ever try to put any sort of nuance into things besides "yeah ykw they probably have a disorder too. Most likely". It was just a passing sentence but it was infuriating to read.

There's also some blatant misspelling of Connolly/Connally that happens in the book that threw me off. Maybe it's an issue with the ARC and will get fixed before the release; it just threw me off since the release is so soon at the time I'm writing this review.

If it weren't for things like this I would have loved to read the rest of the series. I had thought the case was a solid one and I had been interested in knowing the other characters. I'm sure fans of the series will probably like this book, but I hope the author improves on these aspects or that it's intentionally here for the characters to learn and grow from in future books.

I think this is the 3rd book of A Discount Detective Mystery series, it can be read as stand alone. My first in this series and this book is good. Cameron Chandler work in Penny-wise Investigations, when she see a woman cry in near the office, she approach and Clara Ramsey need help to save her niece Tilly from sacrifice in full moon.

The case was interesting involving ancient cultures and the moon, i eager to know more about moon ritual but there no more information because of the murder. The story not focus on murder, there is climate change group because Tilly involve there. I hope there more about Cameron and Detective Connolly, maybe next book.

Thank you to NetGalley for provide this book, it is pleasure to review this book.

#MoonlightCanBeDeadly #ADiscountDetectiveMystery #CharlotteStuart #BooksGoSocial #NetGalley #ARC

My rating is probably between a 3 and a 4. I love a good cozy mystery book and I especially enjoy the more diverse protagonist selection in this genre as of late. The main character, Cameron, is a widowed PI who’s chasing a murderer in connection to a cult and an eco terrorist group. I also feel like cult related fiction is pretty trendy these days and it was interesting to read the author’s characterization of a cult.

I also really liked the dialogue between the characters, I felt like the plot didn’t drag on and kept great pace, and the big reveal/ending was satisfying. I wouldn’t say it was mind blowing, but it was solid.

HOWEVER, I had NO clue this book was the fourth in a series??? I think my rating is definitely a reflection of the fact that most characters weren’t given too much introduction and there was a whole ensemble that was hard to keep track of. Much of my criticism was that this book didn’t feel like a stand-alone but now that I know that it isn’t, it makes much more sense.

I did feel like the characters were charming even as I had to read between the lines to figure out who they were. I enjoyed the book enough that I’ll probably back track to read the first three at some point.