Sandra's Book Club: Blog Tour: The Charlie Henson Series by Louy Castonguay

My Neighbor's Keeper
Charlie
Henson Book 1

by
Louy Castonguay

Genre:
Cozy Mystery

"My Neighbor’s Keeper," the first in a series, is centered on retired paramedic Mrs. Charlotte Henson, aka Charlie or Mrs. H. She’s sixty years old and a widow. Her husband, a former police officer, was run down by a drunk driver three years before. Charlie befriends shy six-year-old Bert, from next door. One evening, Bert comes to her door, dirty, tattered and crying. His mother won’t wake up and his two younger sisters, he says, are hungry. Charlie runs to the rescue,
and ends up embroiled in a murder. Bert’s mother is crumpled at the foot of the cellar stairs. When Charlie realizes she’s under surveillance, she sneaks out the back door and down to the river,
where her canoe is kept. She gets out on the river, at night, in a rainstorm, goes upriver and travels to a cabin hidden in the woods in order to buy time to solve the crime. Along her journey, she makes
friends, and also gets help from her husband’s niece, Louise.

My review: A crying 6-year old boy knocks on Charlie Henson’s door one night. His sisters were hungry and his mommy wasn’t waking up. There was other way to spin: his mother was dead. And the father was nowhere to be found.

All of a sudden, Charlie becomes her neighbor’s keeper (the children’s keeper,) turning her life into Baby Boom until the kids get taken away into custody. But something was odd about the whole thing. Was she a suspect in a crime? How could anyone think that she was involved in that woman’s death?

To clear this mess, she runs off to her cabin in the woods. With the help of her inquisitive niece, she tries to solve this puzzling mystery.

Story was overall well-written and thorough. Although not quite as enticing, the mystery was pretty good.

My rating: 3.5 stars

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Child's Keeper

Charlie
Henson Book 2

Genre:
Cozy Mystery

This Maine mystery tale, "Child’s Keeper," is the second book in the Charlie Henson series. Charlotte, aka Charlie, a retired paramedic, embroils herself in international intrigue when she attempts to help a friend. She discovers that Shirley, the great-granddaughter of her friend Susie, has gone missing, along with her two young daughters. She soon learns Shirley has fled to Canada and travels there to find out what is going on. The oldest daughter, Shawna, is soon in the hands of Canadian authorities, caught in a sinister plot to find Shirley. Charlie locates the daughter, steals a
snowmobile, and crosses back into Maine. The situation becomes very complicated when she herself is kidnapped by the very criminals interested in finding Shirley. When she finds herself back in Canada, on the snowmobile trail again, she is able to effect an escape for herself and Shawna. Will help arrive in time, or will the bad guys find her first? In this journey, she gets help from unexpected places and from old friend Ronny Curtis.

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I am a double graduate from UMF. My first degree in 1989 was in Community Nutrition, with a minor in chemistry, the better to plot murders. My second degree, in 1994, was for the newly developed BFA in Creative Writing but had to be fluent in a foreign language. I'm Franco American, so aced that.

I have worked at various jobs throughout Central Maine, including shoe shops, egg plants, wool mills, office jobs, finally spending time as
a volunteer driver for Community Concepts. Life experiences along the way have given much material for my books.

I am currently hard at work on the series, doing promotional activities and hope to have a web site up soon. I'm also running a blog, Keeper Series, to keep my reader's abreast of my progress. I hope to have the next volume out by April.