Friday, March 6, 2026

Murder Plays Second Fiddle - A Guest Post, Review, & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Cassidy Jamison to Cozy Up With Kathy today. You can find Cassidy on the pages of the Pearly Girls Mystery series by Heather Weidner. MURDER PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE is the second book in the series and was released earlier this year.

A Day in the Life of Cassidy Jamison by Heather Weidner
A Veronica Mars Meets the Golden Girls in a Multi-generational Cozy Mystery

I am Cassidy Jamison, and I am so excited. I signed a contract for a new project for Celebrations at Ivy Springs, my event planning service and location destination in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I normally host parties, weddings, and business retreats, but I jumped at the chance when the alumni planning team at the high school approached me about having their big reunion at my place.

I moved back to Ivy Springs a couple of years ago when my grandmother passed away. I have a marketing background, so taking over her business seemed like a good fit for me. I may have bitten off more than I expected. I am so grateful that my grandmother’s friends, the Pearly Girls, stayed on to help me keep things running. The Pearly Girls are an amazing group of retired women: Ruthanne Carmichael, a former CPA and my accountant; Kate Carlson, a former nurse; Aileen Roberts, former elementary school teacher, and Roxie Mathews, former interior designer and the group’s cougar. They have been so helpful with keeping our events calendar organized and helping with decorations. They are so talented, even if they are always prying into my dating life and trying to fix me up with any eligible bachelor. 

I have been so busy with the business that I haven’t done a lot of reconnecting with folks in town, and I was hoping that the reunion would help me get a jump start on that. We have meet and greets, a redux of the Homecoming dance, goat yoga and meditation in my Zen garden, a sock hop, a concert, and a golf tournament planned for the two-weekend event. 

Little did I know that the whole thing was going to make me flashback to high school. Some things never change, and the mean girls just got meaner. I spent most of my time with the planning team trying to calm tensions and solve over-dramatized problems. And then if things weren’t tense enough, two of the alumni ended up murdered on my property. The Pearly Girls and I had to jump in and help the sheriff’s office with the investigation in order to clear the name of an innocent suspect. 

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Review
 

 MURDER PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE by Heather Weidner
The Second Pearly Girl Mystery
 
Always looking to book new events at Celebrations at Ivy Springs Cassidy Jamison is happy to host the Class of 2009's high school reunion. The party will include several events held on two consecutive weekends which is definitely good for Celebrations' bottom line. However, Cassidy needs to grit her teeth and bear it as the reunion committee led by Brittany Mahoney is exacting with list after list of demands. Despite some drama the first event seems to be going well - until Britt's dead body is found. Britt's second in command takes over and insists the reunion events proceed. But the list of people interested diminishes as the list of suspects remain high. Amid thoughts of expanding her venue and romantic starts and stutters Cassidy and the Pearly Girls find themselves eager to solve another mystery and put this murderous reunion behind them. 
 
MURDER PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE makes me glad I never bothered going to my high school reunion...any of them. In the second Pearly Girl Mystery mean girls remained mean and there's even nastiness within the clique.
 
The mystery was well done. Though many people could have wanted Brittany dead, the way in which the murder was staged and the way clues showed up after police and Cassidy and her crew searched definitely pointed at an inside job. And when the second body was found...
 
Austin was a nice addition to the cast of characters, both to ogle over and make Detective Zac jealous without Cassidy even trying. The Pearly Girls remain a hoot, fun loving, yet also hardworking, and never too old to do a bit of ogling themselves. I love how people of all ages work and play together. Age is just a number and you might think Cassidy was the biological age of the Pearly Girls while the Girls act more like Cassidy's 20 something!
 
Friends that are as good as family, lots of laughs, and carefully constructed murder make MURDER PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE a delightful mystery.
 
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 Murder Plays Second Fiddle (The Pearly Girls Mysteries) by Heather Weidner

About Murder Plays Second Fiddle

Murder Plays Second Fiddle (The Pearly Girls Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series
Setting - Ivy Springs, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Publisher: ‎ Keylight Books
Publication Date: ‎ January 13, 2026
Print Length: ‎ 256 pages

The Pearly Girls return to solve a high school reunion murder in this sequel to Murder Strikes a Chord.

Event planner Cassidy Jamison and her not-so-helpful sexagenarian staff of Roxie, Kate, Aileen, and Ruthanne are up to their elbows with a high school reunion committee’s constantly changing requirements for an event that must be the most elaborate and memorable at all costs.

When well-known reporter, Darcy Branch, and former cheerleader, Brittany Mahoney, are found dead on her property, Cassidy and the gang have to find the killer before the party’s over. And the more Cassidy and her Chihuahua mix, Elvis, dig for clues, the more deadly secrets they uncover—including one that changes everything she knows about her family’s history.

The Pearly Girls need to solve the case before the Class of 2009 goes down in Ivy Springs history as the deadliest reunion.

About Heather Weidner

Heather Weidner

Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.

Her short stories appear in the Virginia is for Mysteries series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, Deadly Southern Charm, Murder by the Glass, First Comes Love, Then Comes Murder, and Crime in the Old Dominion, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’ Cookbook.

She is a member of Sisters in Crime: National, Central Virginia, Chessie, Guppies, and Grand Canyon Writers, International Thriller Writers, and James River Writers, and she blogs regularly with the Writers Who Kill.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie Shepherd named Cooper.

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