The Haunted Bookshop Book

The relationships between the characters in the Death on Demand books has always been what made these books for me. This is the group of people that I want around me regardless of the situation, because they will do absolutely anything for a friend. As usual, the story moves along very quickly, and I love Hart's writing style. There were a few things in this one that made me absolutely crazy however. First of all, there are starting to be way too many characters running through these books, which makes it hard to keep up sometimes with who is whom. Secondly, how in the heck was there a whole group of folks on Broward's Rock that didn't recognize Annie, one of whom worked in town near her shop? And thirdly, if these folks didn't know Annie, they didn't know Max either, so why go to such extensive links to frame him for the murder? And when Laurel was so central to the action for so long, how did she just vanish from the story until the end? There just seemed to be a lot of unanswered questions when this book is finished, which led me to a lower rating than I typically give this series.