Dead Post Society

Diane Kelly brings together great characters, wonderful atmosphere, a former boarding school property being repurposed for an upscale retirement community, a headmaster’s house with violent history, and a mystery. Dead Post Society is the seventh book in the House-Flipper Mystery series featuring carpenter Whitney Whitaker Flynn.

Whitney and her cousins Buck and Owen work for her uncle’s carpentry business, Whitaker Woodworking. However, she and Buck also have their own building-flipping business. When told the headmaster’s Victorian home was going to be demolished Whitney and Buck come up with a plan to buy it and two acres of land and renovate it into a boutique hotel.

The mystery surrounds the deaths of the last headmaster, Irving Finster, and his wife Rosie. The case was never closed by the Robertson County sheriff’s office. As usual, Whitney can’t leave it alone until she determines what happened. But can Whitney solve the cold case or will it remain a mystery?

Whitney is inquisitive, perceptive, believes in progress as well as preservation, and doesn’t like to be the center of attention. She’s skilled, reliable, resourceful, and hardworking. She’s also married to Collin Flynn, a Nashville police homicide detective. He is intelligent, has a strong work ethic, a strict moral code, and runs to relieve stress. Buck has a great sense of humor and handles a lot of the heavier work. As in the author’s Mountain Lodge series, this series has features cats with Whitney’s cat Sawdust’s thoughts being interspersed throughout the book in a few short chapters. Collin’s two cats also make appearances throughout the book. While they aren’t necessary to the story line, they provide some humor and insights that made them enjoyable. The main characters were likeable and relatable. The relationships between the various characters add to the charm of the novel.

The story starts with a family event rather than a mystery, but quickly moves on to the carpentry work at the boarding school and the desire to purchase the headmaster’s house. Readers learn about the mystery surrounding the deaths of the Finsters. The intriguing plot had a few twists and turns and the characters had depth and came to life. While I guessed some of the items related to the mystery, this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story as I sped through it effortlessly. Food is mentioned through the novel and a recipe is included at the end of the book. I also enjoyed the poems and literary references at the beginning of each chapter. My only quibbles are that I wanted more details on the renovations, and there was so much going on with the family and the investigation, that the usual banter between Whitney and Buck was in short supply.

Overall, this is an engaging, clever, and entertaining novel that was a fast read. Readers looking for a cozy mystery with a dash of humor and a cold case that needs to be solved will likely enjoy this novel. I am looking forward to reading the next book.

St. Martin’s Press – Minotaur Books and Diane Kelly provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. Publication date is currently set for April 01, 2025.