Tracy Gardner: Avery Ayers Mystery Series

[SheltieLover]

https://cozy-mystery.com/blog/tracy-gardner-avery-ayers-mystery-series/

The titular Avery Ayers is a 25 year old woman taking over the family business of Antiquities & Artifacts Appraised after the death of her parents about a year before the start of the novel. The business has offices both in Lilac Grove, a small upstate town less than an hour outside New York City, and a branch office in Manhattan. Avery had moved back to Lilac Grove from Philadelphia after the death of her parents to take care of her much younger sister Tilly, still in high school, as had their eccentric Aunt Midge, a sixty year old woman with a wide and diverse network of contacts in art and culture.

The book certainly starts out fast with a mystery – a note, apparently written by the siblings deceased father, arrives one morning warning them from taking a contract, though which contract is vague. Avery has no doubt that their father is deceased, but the note is hard to shake entirely, using nicknames that few other people outside the family would have known.

The only obvious upcoming “contract” that could prove troublesome is an offer from the New York Museum of Antiquities to appraise a large ruby, an obviously potentially valuable item but also one well within Avery’s area of expertise. The ruby seems potentially to be a match for a missing gem from another art piece, a dragon medallion which had already been missing a ruby eye before coming into possession of the Museum of Antiquities. When the ruby goes missing, suddenly coworkers, museum employees, and even visiting actors shooting a movie in a closed part of the museum all suddenly start looking like potential suspects… not only in the missing ruby, but in the death of Avery’s parents, which starts to look less and less like an accident.

More at link. Sounds good go me! Enjoy!