Best first in a new series I've read in a long time.

Ruth’s grandfather instilled in her a love of timepieces. Unfortunately after her grandmother died and he remarried, Ruth and Grandpa Thom became estranged. She’s wanted to reconnect after her recent divorce, but sadly her grandfather has been found dead after a break-in at his shop—and the police believe he was murdered.

Ruth has been named the heir to Grandpa Thom’s clock shop, the Cog & Sprocket, in the small Berkshire town of Orchard, Massachusetts. As soon as she moves into the small apartment above the shop and begins tackling the heaps of unfinished work, Ruth finds herself trying to stay on the good side of Grandpa’s bossy gray cat, Bezel, while avoiding the step-grandmother she never wanted.

I really have no complaints; it was a solid story with fleshed out characters, an air of romantic interest, but no sign of a love triangle. I found the whole horology angle incredibly interesting and I find myself more curious now about old clocks. I guessed the murderer pretty early on, but not because the author played fast and loose with clues; rather there was a subtle difference to one of the characters that just made me think "that one". It wasn't obvious though, so I enjoyed reading to the end in order to find out if I was right.

Additionally, this is the first book I can remember reading in recent memory that didn't have editing errors so blatant that they stopped me in my reading tracks. Nice.

I'm looking forward to the next book with hope that Ms. Holmes has another solid mystery on offer. ( )

Ruth Clagan has just spent a week at a Vermont retreat, trying to decide what she wants to do with her life. Her marriage has recently dissolved, and she's estranged from her grandfather - partly because he never wanted her to marry her ex-husband, and partly because he remarried only two years after the loss of her beloved grandmother. But now she wants to reconnect, and sends him a postcard telling him so. But before she's able to see him, she receives a telephone call from an attorney who tells her that her grandfather - or G.T. (for Grandpa Thom) as she calls him, is dead - killed during a robbery, and the sheriff suspects it was murder.

Stunned, she returns to the small Massachusetts town of Orchard to find out what happened. She finds that while his wife received the house and its contents, she received her grandfather’s shop, the Cog & Sprocket, and everything in it. Ruth is overwhelmed by it all, and still doesn’t know if she’s going to stay or not. Fortunately, she has the help of G.T’s assistant Pat Reed, and unfortunately, she’ll have to work with G.T.’s widow Caroline, because she does the books and knows what G.T. was working on. While she may not be happy about the situation, she hasn’t got a choice. She's also inherited the shop's cat, Bezel, since she's going to be living in the apartment above the shop.

What Ruth does see is that there are clocks - so many clocks - filling the shop, and Pat tells her they're from the estate of Grover Winter, G.T.'s best friend. He bought them all at once, and had planned on repairing and selling them, with some of the profits to go to Grover's family. But since he died before he was able to do so, that task will fall to Ruth. If she decides to stay.

However, Ruth is curious to find out who killed her grandfather, and she hopes she can find the answers in the shop. But she'd better find out soon, because if she doesn't, Orchard might have one more death on their hands...

I have to say that for the most part I enjoyed this book, but I really didn't care about all the inner workings of a clock. It seems that would appeal only to those who are interested, and I've always felt that writers should realize if their books are going to appeal to a mass audience or a select few. Perhaps if there had been more on the mystery and less on clocks, I might have enjoyed it a whole lot more.

There were also a couple of things that bothered me. I get that Caroline inherited the house and its contents, but she had to have known that the quilt was made for Ruth by her grandmother, so I wondered why she didn't offer it to her. After all, would the loss of one quilt make that much of a difference? She also didn't ask if there was anything in the house that had belonged to Ruth's grandmother that she might have wanted. Wouldn't they have meant more to Ruth than to her? Especially since she'd never met the woman? It's little things like this that bring the reader to care about characters more.

Aside from this, the book was pretty much an easy read. It wasn't difficult to figure out the killer, although the reason why didn't become apparent until toward the end, which is fine. I understand her wanting to rebuild the clock tower, but that's not much of a reason to read the next book.

Unfortunately, most of the book was about clocks and the clock tower. If you remove these parts, there wasn't a whole lot of mystery left. Just when you'd start to get involved in the mystery, here comes another infomercial on the workings of clocks. Because of this, the book was finished quickly without too much thought.

However, since it is the first in a (very short) series, I may or may not read the rest of these books. All in all, not a bad book, but not a great one, either. ( )

Nice beginning to this series, likeable characters, nice town, Ruth doesn't pretend to be a detective when she is not. ( )

Just Killing Time is the first book in the A Clock Shop Mystery series.

A great start to a new series and one that the reader will love losing a little time in.

Ruth Clagen has been off to a retreat hoping to achieve a peaceful Zen. Before returning to her home in Boston, she is going to stop in Orchard, MA and spend a little time with her Grandpa Thom(GT), who she hasn't seen or spoken with for five years. As she is checking her messages on her phone, she learns that GT has recently died from a heart attack suffered during a possibly a second robbery to Cogs and Sprockets, his clock shop. She also learns that he has left her the shop.

Once she arrives and talks to Jeff Paisley, she learns that the first robbery five valuable clocks were stolen and is suspected that the robber has come back for more valuable clocks.

She meets with her step grandmother, Caroline and learns that her grandfather has also upset some of the residents by wanting to keep the little community the way it is, and has been, by declaring the downtown area a historical area.

Glover Winters and GT had been working together to save City Hall from being turned into a mini-mall. Just before Winter's untimely death, he deeded city hall to GT, but nobody has been able to find the deed.

The author does an excellent job of describing the little community of Orchard and its residents. Next door to her shop is a unisex hair salon, with its owner Ben Clover. She nearly runs him over when she first arrives, but they are able to put that aside and he becomes a good ally. Next to Ben is the Sleeping Latte, coffee shop diner run by Nancy and Moriah Reed. Nancy's husband Pat works at the clock shop as a handyman and by also helping GT repair clocks.

With the shop having a lot of inventory, Ruth wants to get the shop organized and start selling some to get some revenue coming in, but also wants to find who attacked GT and why.

A wonderful setting, with people one would like to know.

Will be looking forward to the next book in this series to see Ruth will be able to move forward with GT's dream for the community of Orchard. ( )