Maggie Toussaint’s Mancini Blue is a paranormal cozy mystery built around grief, art, and a distinctly Southern sense of community. Sixty-year-old Bob Calloway has moved to a Georgia barrier island after the supposed suicide of his wife, celebrated painter Sophie Mancini. When another woman is found dead and covered in Sophie’s signature shade of blue, Bob becomes both a suspect and an amateur investigator. The case soon reaches back into Savannah’s art scene, where a missing painting, falsified prescriptions, and suspicious exhibition shipments suggest that Sophie’s death was part of something much larger.

Bob gives the novel its personality. He’s stubborn, protective, occasionally exasperating, and still learning how to live after a breakdown fueled by alcohol and grief. His ability to sense emotional energy from people and objects adds a supernatural element, but it also works as an extension of his empathy. The family material is equally important. Bob’s strained relationships with his sons, his concern for his grandniece Gussie, and his lingering guilt over Sophie make solving the murder feel like a step toward rebuilding his life.

The mystery develops through an appealing mixture of police work, family conversations, art-world intrigue, and short passages from the killer’s perspective. Toussaint plants useful clues, especially around Sophie’s paintings and the people responsible for transporting them, while keeping several credible suspects in circulation. Some information is repeated as Bob reviews the case, and the broad humor occasionally bumps against the darker material involving addiction, sexual violence, and murder. Still, the coastal setting, colorful supporting cast, and unusual older male lead give the story a warm, eccentric character. Its most satisfying thread is Bob’s gradual movement from fixation and self-blame toward renewed trust in his family and in himself.

I’d recommend Mancini Blue to readers who enjoy character-driven cozy mysteries with a light psychic element and a slightly darker crime underneath the friendly small-town surface. It should particularly suit fans of mature protagonists, Southern settings, complicated families, and mysteries rooted in creative communities. Readers who like watching an amateur sleuth collaborate, and sometimes spar, with a capable police chief will also find plenty to enjoy. The book closes its central case while giving Bob a convincing emotional fresh start and leaving room for his intuition, his art studio, and his promising relationship with Chief Darlene Smiley to carry future stories.

Pages: 263 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0HCHW5JGT