Kyle Bari inherited enough money from his parents to live a comfortable life, never mind the fact that he is a successful enough author. Kyle has lived his life in a simple fashion, a swim in the morning, some food and sitting in front of the computer. All that changes when his first love and crush at sixteen comes back to Steeple Hill, but he’s not alone, Adam brings home his lover of two years - Brett. Only twenty-one, Brett causes trouble amongst the artistic circle of Steeple Hill. But when he shows up dead, Adam and Kyle seem to be the Sheriff’s number one suspects.

As a chain of events start unfolding, Kyle makes it his business to find out what’s been going on. But Adam, who hasn’t grown out of taking care of the sick sixteen-year-old boy, tries to deter Kyle from getting hurt. Adam and Kyle try to figure out their relationship, and also find out who the murderer is in Steeple Hill.

Words cannot describe how beautiful the writing of Murder in Pastel is. A real mystery buff, this book delivered the genre to perfection. The story was beautiful in imagery and language, rich in detail and characterizing. The scattering of witty humor and sarcasm just made me love this book even more. What also astounded me about this book was how many layers this book had, and with all the back story, the suspense, characterizations and the “who-dun-it” the writing showed no signs of being hectic and over-run with unnecessary dialogue or scenery detailing. Everything about this book was perfect. The author truly understood where he/she was going with this story.

I also loved the introduction of high culture into this book. The characters of this story were mainly artists or knew a great deal about art, but with high culture comes elitism, and it’s easy to dislike these qualities. However the author voiced these characters in a form, where it seemed like they were educating you. Sometimes in books you get hankered down with phrases or quotes, names of places or artists, poets or philosophers and sometimes it comes off - very elitist. But the author in my opinion didn’t do that, and that’s a great achievement in my eyes.

In the end I found Murder in Pastel to be one of the most intelligent and fascinating book I have read this year. I highly recommend this book, it gives you everything you want: Mystery, suspense, romance and heart-tugging emotion.