Greetings! Today’s Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour is for Murder at Fantasia Fair, the 2nd book in the Provincetown Mystery series by Jeannette de Beauvoir. Ms. de Beauvoir has generously provided a small guest post about the book and an excerpt from it. Purchase links and Rafflecopter Giveaway link will be below the excerpt. Enjoy!

Guest Post

Provincetown is a village on a small spit of land in the Atlantic Ocean that has fewer than 2,000 residents in the winter—and over 60,000 in the summer. You just know that with that kind of change in demographics, something untoward might happen… and, of course, it does!

That’s the premise behind my Provincetown Mystery series, stories that take place during the seaside town’s famous “theme weeks,” when Ptown is overrun with all sorts of holidaying folks, from Family Week to the Portuguese festival and beyond.

Wedding consultant Sydney Riley is in the thick of it, and in the second book in the series, Murder at Fantasia Fair, she has to unravel the mystery of who put the knife in the transgender woman’s back… before that person takes aim at her as well. Sydney’s an integral part of her beloved Provincetown and navigates its various populations—straight and gay, old and young, literary personas and party animals—with aplomb and a sense of humor that (some would say way too often!) verges on the sarcastic.

The inn looked fantastic: I had to give Glenn that. Well, it had always looked fantastic, but there was a certain gaiety about the place today that had me humming the moment I got in. Rachel Parsons, the coordinator for Fantasia Fair, was standing beside the front desk, calmly ticking off items on a clipboard. I tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, Rachel.”

She glanced at me. “Good morning, Sydney,” she said. “You look awful.”

“Thanks ever so much,” I said sourly. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“They make pills for that sort of thing nowadays,” she observed, her eyes back on her paperwork.

None that are available at three in the morning.”

She glanced at me, amused. “You should live in New York City,” she said. “There’s nothing that you can’t get at three in the morning there.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Provincetown’s just the right size for me. In the winter I can go to the Stop & Shop and recognize everybody I see there. In the summer the town is flooded with visitors; and, in some way or another, most of us who live here year-round make our livings catering to those visitors. Sometimes I think it’s the contrast between the two seasons that’s most appealing. “Anyway, my cat would have kept me awake even with pills. He snores.”

“Cats snore?” She stared at me, momentarily distracted. “Who knew?”

“Stick with me. I’ll fill your head with all sorts of useless facts.” I slid past the counter to the space where I worked, tucked aside from the day-to-day business of the inn: a roll top desk, a very big calendar, and a wastepaper basket. My domain, such as it was. “Anyone arrive yet?”

“Heavens, yes,” Rachel said. “The meet-and-greet isn’t until six o’clock tonight, it always is, but that’s never stopped people from getting here early, and already there are about a million questions.”

I sat down and opened my laptop. “You must be used to it,” I said.

She sighed. “Yes, I suppose I must.”

I looked up at her. Rachel is tall—well, many trans women are, having begun life as males—and seemed even taller from where I was sitting. “You suppose you must? That doesn’t sound so positive. Isn’t that your job?”

“Of course it is. But sometimes I feel like, gosh, maybe they can just look at the schedule I hand them, or even go all-out and Google something for themselves. How far to the Monument?” She rolled her eyes. “How far is it? You can see the frigging Monument from here.”

“Ah, that kind of question,” I said, nodding sagely. “Welcome to my world.” I grinned. “Last week, someone asked me what we do with the Monument in the winter. I wanted to say that we roll it up and put it in storage.”

Rachel laughed. “Tourists. Gotta love them.”

“Well, that, or starve,” I said cheerfully.

Purchase Links/Goodreads/Rafflecopter

Murder at Fantasia Fair: A Provincetown Mystery
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
HomePort Press (September 28, 2017)
Paperback: 282 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0999245125
E-Book ASIN: B075ZY26XQ

Purchase Link – Amazon

Rafflecopter Giveaway

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