Photo Snap Shot by Joanna Campbell Slan

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Kiki Lowenstein rushes to her daughter Anya’s school after being told Anya and a friend happened onto the dead body of one of the school’s teachers. Besides being concerned with how the discovery will affect her daughter emotionally, Kiki is also worried that the girls might have seen the killer-or at least that the killer might think so, putting them in danger. So it doesn’t take much urging from Detective Chad Detweiler for Kiki to start investigating.

While this series is built around Kiki Lowenstein’s scrapbooking business, this is far from a “craft” mystery. There are scrapbooking hints scattered throughout, but non-scrapbookers can just skip those pages and keep reading. Kiki does use her job as a way to snoop into people’s lives, but the mystery itself has very little to do with the craft. Instead, Slan uses her mystery series to take a hard look at tough issues. In the series, Anya attends a very exclusive private school. While that school has recently made an effort to diversify its student body, Slan’s books are an interesting study in class structure in America.

The mystery in Photo Snap Shot is based in institutional racism. While looking at the traditions of the Old Guard families of St. Louis, the author gives readers an interesting look into the Veiled Prophet Society. From the selection of the Queen of Love and Beauty and her court to their coming out ball to the parade each year, this society’s history makes for a fascinating back drop for murder.

Photo Snap Shot is the third book in the Kiki Lowenstein series. While the lives of the characters evolve from one book to the next, it is not at all necessary to have read the previous books, Paper, Scissors, Death and Cut, Crop and Die to appreciate this book.

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