Trapping, Turkeys, & Thanksgiving

Twenty-seven books in, Mae West has a ring on her finger, a wedding she refuses to date, and a weakness for the seasonal cookies at the Cookie Crumble that has driven her to join a running group. The pardoned former preacher Lester Hager is back in Normal, Kentucky, and dying. Hank Sharp has left the sheriff’s office to open a private investigation firm with Jerry Truman. And it is Thanksgiving week, which means the whole town is coming home. Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes opens on that crowded, cheerful note, then spends most of its length explaining why one homecoming went wrong twenty years ago.

Where Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving Sits

Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes is the twenty-eighth Camper and Criminals mystery, first published by the author on 17 November 2022. The series began in 2018 and follows Mae, who lost her money and her marriage to a Ponzi scheme and rebuilt her life running Happy Trails Campground on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest. We have not reviewed any of the earlier books, so the order below is plain text, taken from the list printed in this edition.

It opens with Beaches, Bungalows, & Burglaries, then Deserts, Drivers, & Derelicts, Forests, Fishing, & Forgery and Christmas, Criminals, & Campers. Motorhomes, Maps, & Murder comes fifth, followed by Canyons, Caravans, & Cadavers; Hitches, Hideouts, & Homicide; Assailants, Asphalt, & Alibis; and Valleys, Vehicles & Victims. Books ten to fifteen are Sunsets, Sabbatical, & Scandal, Tents, Trails, & Turmoil, Kickbacks, Kayaks, & Kidnapping, Gear, Grills, & Guns, Eggnog, Extortion, & Evergreens and Ropes, Riddles, & Robberies. Then come Paddlers, Promises, & Poison, Insects, Ivy, & Investigations, Outdoors, Oars, & Oaths, Wildlife, Warrants, & Weapons, Blossoms, Barbeque, & Blackmail and Lanterns, Lakes, & Larceny. The run up to this one is Jackets, Jack-O-Lantern, & Justice, Santa, Sunrises, & Suspicions, Vistas, Vices, & Valentines, Adventure, Abduction, & Arrest, Rangers, RV’s, & Revenge and Campfires, Courage, & Convicts. Gifts, Glamping, & Glocks follows at twenty-nine, with Zoning, Zealots, & Ziplines and Hammocks, Handguns, & Hearsay after it.

What Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving Adds

The holiday is not wallpaper here. The case starts at the annual reunion the night before Thanksgiving, where a brawl breaks out between old schoolmates and a fiddler keeps playing straight through it. On Thanksgiving morning, Mae and her running partner jog past the restaurant and find the parking lot full of deputies. The next day she runs the Turkey Trot in a light snow, in a race that is mostly a fast walk.

Underneath sits a cold case. On a trail run before any of this, a squirrel drops a laminated funeral card at Mae’s feet, and she finds a small wooden cross marking where a seventeen-year-old fell from a cliff years earlier. Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes ties the new death to that old one early, and the question of what a group of teenage friends agreed to say becomes the book’s real subject.

What works

• Dottie Swaggert is the comic engine. Chain-smoking, matchmaking and incapable of a quiet entrance, she gets the best lines, and her reaction to being asked to be a bridesmaid is the warmest scene in the book.
• Short chapters with real hooks. Almost every chapter ends on a turn, and two of the mid-book cliffhangers genuinely jolt.
• One red herring is fairly planted. A crafting detail shown in passing comes back later as a clue, and it rewards attention without cheating.
• The extras suit the season. The back of the book carries two recipes, a doughnut and an autumn cocktail, plus some cold-weather camping tips.

Where It Gives Ground

The weaknesses are the kind a long-running series accumulates, and in Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes they add up.

• The solution comes in one leap. A name is mentioned in passing, a second character supplies a missing link over the phone, and Mae has the whole thing in a paragraph. The detail that makes the method possible is never seeded earlier.
• Continuity slips. A minor character’s surname changes from scene to scene, and a key past event is confused with a recent one in at least one exchange.
• The campground gets catalogue copy. A tour of Mae’s camper renovation, down to the shiplap and the pink headboard, stops the story cold, and the cross-promotion of local shops recurs.
• Coincidence does the legwork. Mae happens to follow the right car to the right place, and help arrives at the right second.

Do You Need the Earlier Books?

Partly. The mystery is self-contained and the culprit has nothing to do with series history. But a great deal of the emotional weight, from Lester’s crime to Hank’s family and an old rival who reappears, depends on twenty-seven books of backstory, and the recaps are brisk. A newcomer can follow Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes without trouble but will feel like a guest at someone else’s reunion.

Read These Next

If Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes leaves you wanting more small-town sleuthing, or more of the holiday, start here.

1. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke, the bakery-and-small-town template this series grew from.
2. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, for a sleuthing club of friends with sharper plotting.
3. The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective by Jo Nichols, another amateur investigation run by neighbours.
4. Turkey Trot Murder by Leslie Meier, if you want a second mystery built around a Thanksgiving race.
5. An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott, for the holiday with no corpses at all.

About Tonya Kappes

Tonya Kappes grew up in Nicholasville, Kentucky, and her Kentucky is the book’s best asset: hairpin mountain roads, a diner with a meal named after a local boy, a church that forgives faster than the courts. She has raised four sons and now writes full-time from a camper of her own, which explains how well she knows the hookups and the cold nights.

• Her author bio counts more than a hundred novels and appearances on bestseller lists including USA Today.
• She calls the camper she writes in her “SHAMPER”, a she-camper.
• Camper and Criminals is one of more than a dozen series she has run, alongside the Kenni Lowry and Killer Coffee mysteries.
• She publishes the series herself, at a pace of several books a year.

The Verdict

Trapping, Turkeys, and Thanksgiving by Tonya Kappes is a comfortable holiday-week read for people who already know the way to Happy Trails. The setting is affectionate, the friendships feel lived in, and the timing is perfect for the long weekend. As a puzzle it is thin, with an answer that arrives in a rush and a middle padded with campground chat. Take it for the company and the season, and let the mystery be the side dish.