ARC Review: A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau

A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau is the first book in the Harriman & Mancini Mystery series, and is set in New York in 1912.

Margot Harriman is the president of a cannery, B&H Foods, having inherited the business from her parents. As the story opens, Margot enters the cannery to pick up some papers she asked the accountant to leave for her, and when she enters the accountant’s office she finds a former employee who has apparently died of natural causes, as she was writing a letter to Margot. Although the death was not suspicious in itself, Margot is concerned about the content of the letter, so she hires a private investigator, Loretta “Rett” Mancini to look into the issue.

A Murderous Business is told In third person from alternating points of view between Margot and Rett as they investigate what is happening at B&H Foods.

Both main characters in the book are LGBTQ+ and there is some commentary in the book about the difficulties people in the LGBTQ+ community would have encountered in the time period in which the novel takes place. Rett is in a long term relationship which her father has difficulty accepting, and Margot enters into a relationship which at one point she can’t reveal to the police for fear of repercussions.

I found the first two thirds of the book to be a bit slow, I was interested, but there wasn’t a lot going on other than Margot and Rett tracking down people, and Margot receiving new threats of blackmail. For the longest time we don’t even really know what the blackmail is about, just that it’s threatening the company. Even once the secret is revealed near the end of the book, the blackmailers’ motivations didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. I felt like if the blackmailers went through with releasing their information, they would also be negatively affected, but maybe my thinking is wrong.

However, the last third of the book really picked up the pace, and was full of action, and suspenseful moments. It felt like I sped through that last third of the book in about twenty minutes, it was so enthralling.

I enjoyed A Murderous Business, and look forward to revisiting the characters in this series. I think this book will appeal to any mystery lover.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A Murderous Business will be available on September 16 2025.