Tuesday Mooney Wore Black by Kate Racculia

You are cordially invited to play a game…

Book blurb

Tuesday Mooney loves a puzzle. So when an eccentric billionaire drops dead, leaving behind a fiendish treasure hunt – open to anyone – to his fortune, Tuesday can’t resist.

Although she works best alone, she soon finds herself partnering up with best friend Dex (money manager by day, karaoke-zealot by night) and the mysterious Nathaniel Arches, eldest son of a wealthy family who held a long-running feud with the dead man.

As the clues are solved, excitement across the city reaches fever pitch – but nothing is as it seems, and the puzzle-within-a-puzzle holds something much darker than a vast fortune at its heart…

My thoughts

This is a mystery novel with a lavish sprinkling of humour and spooky-ness thrown in. It’s really enjoyable.

Tuesday Mooney works in a hospital. She researches individuals, rich people, in order to enable the hospital to campaign, set up events targeting them as potential donors. She’s good at it, Tuesday loves a puzzle. That’s why she spends time taking part in quizzes with her ex-colleague and good friend Dev.

It’s at one such event that Vincent Pryce, one of the billionaires attending, drops dead. He was looking towards Tuesday and the man – Nathaniel Arches – she was talking to when it happened. Dev had just been chatting with him and his wife. He thought that Vince and Tuesday would get along so well.

Dev’s a lot of fun and he’s the one that tells Tuesday about the treasure hunt. A rather strange obituary for Vincent has stated that a number of the treasure hunters will find, ‘win’, part of his fortune! Dev knows Tuesday won’t be able to resist the idea of working out the clues.

Then the wealthy Nathaniel Arches, Archie – the man she was talking to at the event, contacts Tuesday to ‘partner’ up so they, along with a young neighbour of Tuesdays, start to solve the clues. And so it begins!

This book has humour, mystery, charm and yet is able to gently address various difficult relationship issues whilst still getting the issue across very well. More than this it is also about healing and building better relationships.

I really liked this book – the characters Tuesday, Dev etc., are very endearing. The plot is fun and yet is very tense in places. It moves along at a really good pace and has that bit of difference that makes the book worth reading. I look forward to reading more about Tuesday, Dev and the others and would recommend this book to anyone.

Thanks

I received an email from from Rachel Quin at HarperCollins – ‘I wanted to share an exclusive invite to read Tuesday Mooney Wore Black, the witty and riveting UK debut by Kate Racculia‘. Whilst, due to personal reasons, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to put up a post I was thrilled to receive an eBook* for review for which I would like to thank Rachel and HarperCollins.

(* I have also purchased a copy.)

Information

Published by HarperCollins (21 October 2019)

Buy: AmazonSmileUK

Author

Kate Racculia is a novelist living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her third novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2019.

Kate was a teenage bassoonist in her hometown of Syracuse, and studied illustration, design, Jane Austen, and Canada at the University of Buffalo. She moved to Boston to get her MFA from Emerson College, and stuck around for 11 years. She has been a cartoonist, a planetarium operator, a movie and music reviewer, a coffee jerk, a bookseller, a designer, a finance marketing proposal writer, and a fundraising prospect researcher. She teaches online for Grub Street, works at her local public library, and sings in the oldest Bach choir in America.

The Books

This Must be the Place

Bellweather Rhapsody

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts / Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

 @kateracculia

Kate Racculia website