The Country Club Murder Mysteries by Julie Mulhern

In the first of these novels, set in Kansas City 1975, artist, and unhappy wife Ellison Russell stumbles over a body during an early morning swim at the Club. The victim is one of her husband’s girlfriends. Several more bodies turn up, including that of her cheating husband. With the help of a handsome police detective and her gossipy bridge partners, Ellison solves the crime.

Subsequent novels follow the same formula. The fun of the novel is not the who done it, but Mulhern’s portrait of waspy, suburban Kansas City. When not stumbling over corpses, Ellison, in a DVF wrap dress and Gucci bag, plays bridge, golfs, dines at the Club, chairs committees, shops at Swanson’s, and attends many, many funerals. Like the communities of Midsomer or Three Pines, KC is losing residents at an alarming rate. By book ten, I wondered how Ellison could find a bridge partner given how many club members in her orbit have met a gruesome end! No worries; there are (to date) twenty, remarkably similar, novels in the series.

Implausible, formulaic but easy reading.