Review: A wonderful old-fashioned mystery that works its way through a town full of fascinating and eccentric characters.

Secrets, gossip, and a murder that could reveal all.

Harry Thurgood just wants a quiet life, and to leave his past in the past. And he thinks he’s found the perfect place in sleepy Magnolia Bluff, Texas. Until the murder of a prominent citizen threatens to let the skeletons out of his closet.

Quiet and unassuming, the Reverend Ember Cole wants nothing more than to be a good pastor to her congregation. And when her friendship with Harry threatens her job, she has to choose between friendship and the church.

However, when the murder is pinned on Ember, Harry decides he and Ember have to find the real killer to keep Ember out of jail and Harry’s past in the past.

But when Harry and Ember are almost killed in a hit and run, they realize the killer will stop at nothing to avoid being found. Even if he has to kill again.

Death Wears a Crimson Hat by CW Hawes is the first book in the new multi-author crime series: The Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles. Each book in the series will be written by one of The Underground Authors and will feature action, suspense, humor, and, of course, murder.

Get in on the action today, and see if you can solve the mystery!

Review by Caleb Pirtle III

Magnolia Bluff is a quiet, little community tucked back into the Texas Hill Country, not far from the shores of Barnet Reservoir. It is a portrait of almost any small town in America with its Pioneer and Victorian homes and its village green. Everyone knows everyone, and no one completely trusts a stranger who happens to wander into their midst and have the audacity to settle down. It’s calm and it’s peaceful, but Magnolia Bluff is a town with a lot of secrets, some of them deadly.

Acclaimed author CW Hawes knows. He’s been hanging around Magnolia Bluff for a while. He listens to the gossip. He picks up the rumors. He knows who’s mad at whom and why.  And, within the pages of Death Wears a Crimson Hat, he ushers us into book one of a multi-author series that deals with the Crime Chronicles of Magnolia Bluff.

The ladies of the Crimson Hat Society are collectively the face of high society in town. And the most important Crimson Hat of all belongs to Mary Lou Fight. Receiving an invitation to join her social group is the greatest honor any woman in town can receive. But there are secrets better forgotten lurking within the Crimson Hats that threaten to tear the organization apart.

Mary Lou loves tradition. It’s tradition, she believes, that holds Magnolia Bluff together, and she is not at all pleased that a woman, the lovely Reverend Ember Cole, has come to town as pastor of the Methodist Church. That’s not right, she thinks. That’s not the way it’s done. Ember Cole has to go, and Mary Lou herself will lead the fight to have her thrown out of church and town.

As CW writes, Ember “smoothed her skirt, cast a glance at the Hats, and saw Mary Lou looking at her. She smiled at the Queen of the Magnolia Bluff Society of Gossips, Backbiters, and Character Assassins. Once outside, she stopped, took hold of the cross that hung on a chain around her neck, and whispered. ‘Anytime, Lord. Anytime.’”

There’s nothing as vicious as a woman scorned unless it’s the woman doing the scorning, the one guilty of digging up dirt on someone.

Alas, murder strikes in Magnolia Bluff and one of the fabled Crimson Hats is dead. Mary Lou blames Ember. Mary Lou accuses Ember Cole of murder, and she has a good chance of making the charge stick. After all, the reverend is new in town. She’s virtually a stranger. She will, Mary Lou says, do anything to keep her pastorate.

Ember has few who will support her, at least in public. But Harry Thurgood will. He’s determined to prove her innocence. Harry is the owner of the Really Good Wood-Fired Coffee Shop. He’s new in town as well. He’s rich. He’s not selling a lot of coffee. He’s a man of mystery. No one knows his past, and Harry would prefer to keep it that way.

CW Hawes cleverly opens old wounds and reveals dark secrets as his story sets Magnolia Bluff on fire, and we watch it burn and smolder as a small-town police force struggles to solve a crime that has everyone baffled. CW has masterfully written a wonderful old-fashioned mystery that works its way through a town full of fascinating and eccentric characters, a place where nothing is as it appears to be, including the murderer. CW’s Magnolia Bluff is definitely a place you’ll want to visit again and again.

Please click HERE to find Death Wears A Crimson Hat on Amazon.