The main character is (as you might guess from the title) Liz Talbot, a private investigator. She returns home when her grandmother is killed. Although in most cozy mysteries, the protagonist is generally a woman with no formal investigative background, it worked for Liz to be a PI. The problem I had is one from which many cozy mysteries suffer - the police chief of her small coastal town is her brother. After the murder, her brother spends all his time telling her not to get involved in the investigation. Naturally, she doesn't listen. It wouldn't be a cozy mystery if she didn't try to find out who killed her beloved grandmother. It's the repetition of "Stay out of it," from her brother the chief with her response of "I am the only one who can solve this crime" that becomes annoying. She's is a private investigator after all. Why shouldn't he simply let her help? If the only conflict an author can provide is a false, unnecessary one then she might want to rethink her main characters and their motivation.
There were a lot of characters wandering through the pages and I felt like I needed a scorecard to keep them all straight. I don't mind meeting a whole cast of fictional characters but when there are so many to keep track of, it becomes more confusing than entertaining. When I'm quilting, I don't want to need to stop and make a list of who is who and who killed which bad guy. The story could have been streamlined with fewer murders and fewer suspects. By the end of the story, I wasn't sure who had died and who had killed them. Worse, I realized I didn't really care. I can get heavily invested in the lives of fictional characters if I'm given enough room to get to know them. But if I have a cast of thousands to get to know, I can't know any of them well enough to care.
I give Lowcountry Boil two quills. The rating would be higher if the story was a little shorter and a little less complicated. I may give the next book in the series a listen but not right away.
