Book ~ "Iced Under" (2016) Barbara Ross

From Goodreads ~ The snow is deep in Maine’s Busman’s Harbor and the mighty rivers are covered in ice. Snowden Family Clambake Company proprietor Julia Snowden and her mother, Jacqueline, are hunkered down for the winter when a mysterious package arrives - heating up February with an unexpected case of murder.

Inside the mystery package is an enormous black diamond necklace that once belonged to Julia’s great-grandmother and disappeared in the 1920s. Who could have sent it - and why? Julia’s search for clues takes her on a perilous journey through her mother’s troubled family history, from a squabble over the family fortune in “frozen water” to the recent unexplained death of Jacqueline’s long-lost cousin Hugh - who’d been missing and presumed drowned for more than forty years. To protect her mother’s inheritance, Julia must fend off a small army of feuding relatives, solve the mystery surrounding Hugh’s demise and get back home before the next blizzard buries them all.

The Snowden Family Clambake business is shut down for winter in Busman’s Harbor, Maine, and it's a quiet time for Julia ... the family is waiting for her sister to have her baby. Things take a surprising turn when her mother receives an anonymous package containing a valuable family heirloom ... a black diamond necklace that once belonged to her estranged mother’s family. Julia investigates and discovers she has relatives in Boston they didn't know about and heads there to meet them and see what she can discover and about the necklace and determine who had sent it. When she arrives, the relatives are gathered because Hugh, her mother's long lost cousin who she had thought had died 40+ years ago, has just passed away. It was expected as he was ill but things get tricky when the police determine he didn't pass away naturally.

This story was written in first person perspective in Julia's voice. It was a bit confusing keeping the family members straight as there were a few of them. I thought the mystery in this story was finding out who sent the necklace so it was a surprise when there was talk of a potential murder more than halfway into the story. It's a cozy mystery so there is no swearing, violence or adult activity. At the end of the book, there are recipes that were mentioned during the story including beef stew, ginger snaps and lasagna.

This is the fifth (of 12) in the Maine Clambake Mystery series. I read the first four recently and will keep moving through the series.