Although I've read and enjoyed the other mysteries in this series, I felt that this was a departure from the underlying theme of the series, namely a mother and her interactions with her family as she goes about trying to solve mysteries. In this story, Lucy was preoccupied with herself, and her family took a backseat as she tried to discover a murderer and contemplated an affair; a not-so-believable twist in the plot. The reader gets a confusing view of Lucy's husband: on the one hand, he's a traditionalist who wants his wife at home; on the other, he'd like her to do what she wants. In the other books, one gets a sense that this is a good marriage. In this book, one wonders what these two have in common. The murder story even took a back seat to Lucy's preoccupation with herself. Was this a muder mystery or a woman's struggle with mid-life crisis? In the end, the resolution is anticlimactic, and the reader is left with some negative thoughts toward Lucy Stone.