Snipped in the Bud

Abby Knight (Brooke Shields) has been sent money anonymously to deliver black roses to someone. The black roses are for a Bruce Barnes (Daniel Kash) who happens to be the pre-law professor for Abby's daughter Sydney (Celeste Desjardins). Abby is apparently terrified of him. En route, Abby runs into an old lawyer rival of hers ( Howell) who teaches at the college. They hate each other. After handing the roses to Barnes, who dumps the roses in the bin, she decides to return to the office to retrieve the roses and ends up seeing Howell sitting in Barnes' chair with a pencil in his throat ...

Brooke Shields is a natural in her role as the protagonist who likes snooping into a murder case. Here, it's personal as she's a suspect, mainly because she had disagreements with the victim. Helping her on the case is Brennan Elliott, with whom Shields has a good chemistry and a possible romantic Union, even though Shields denies there's a romance. The mystery is simple, but the appeal is in the humour and banter. It's a good lighthearted fun with no intention to be a "grim, realistic" crime saga. Shame they didn't make more than three episodes.

Brooke Shields plays Beau Bridges daughter? Seriously she looks more age appropriate to play his wife. Im unsure why the new Hollywood theme seems to put these ageing cougars romantically with younger men, but its not working the lines are pretty weak, particularly Brook Shields reaction to finding a murder victim...laughable. The plot is interesting but really this is no more than a TV movie

Abby visits her daughter at law school on the way to deliver black roses to one of her toughest professors. Walking in to the building she runs in to one of her former court adversaries and they exchange words on the way in to the building. Abby has a not so pleasant exchange with her daughter's professor, who not only throws away the black roses but turns out to be a big tool! In the parking lot after she has a phone call with Marco, she decides to go back in and rescue her flowers from the trash. Once back in the professors office...she finds her former adversary dead, stabbed in the neck with the other professor's pencil.

Abby may not have liked her adversary...but no amount of convincing from Marco is going to prevent her from digging in to this case.

Our meddling coffee drinking Abby jumps in to this case with both feet even while the reporters are circling thanks to an unfortunate accident putting her fingerprints on the murder weapon, making Abby the number one suspect.

"Why kill someone with your own pencil in your own chair."-Nikki

"Find clues, facts, suspects without being seen...ok a stakeout."-Abby

Professors Barnes and Howell did not agree or get along, but in-spite that, Professor Barnes gives quite the eulogy at Howell's memorial. At the memorial, professor Barnes' wife kind of hits on Marco...adding her to the list of suspicious suspects.

"Come on Abby, I'm a pretty interesting guy."-Marco

The anonymous black roses...are an interesting touch and an interesting clue in this case of the murdered law professor.

This is the second entry in the Flower Shop Mysteries and once again Brennan Elliot and Beau Bridges put in another great performance.

When your dad has to come over with a drink and the paper and insists on staying while you read it...well, you know that isn't a good sign.

(Side note: Abby's flower shop is finally starting to look like a flower shop.)

Still not my favorite in the hallmark mystery series vault...but some good acting, funny lines...and generally a decent mystery.

This is a response to the person who felt Ms Shields (age 54) should have portrayed Beau Bridges' (age 78) wife rather that be paired with with an actor is is only 10 years her junior. Really! Ridges is definitely old enough to be her father. I know this isn't a review and won't be printed, but I felt the "reviewer" missed the boat when focusing on the age oh the leads.

The second Flower Shop Mystery: Snipped In The Bud has our lawyer/florist making a personal delivery of flowers to the law school at her alma mater and to Professor Jeff Teravainen. Only Brooke Shields finds she's delivered her flowers to a corpse. Unfortunately she also touched an item at the crime scene.

Which puts her as number one suspect for Detective Paulino Nunes. I could so identify with this part of the story. In my days at NYS Crime Victims Board I saw cases where the police just got an idea and stuck with it and sometimes they were wrong in their theory of the crime. The fact that Brooke had no motive at all for killing this man who was a very popular professor didn't seem to make no differences to Nunes.

So with the help of boyfriend Brennan Elliott and some counsel from Beau Bridges her dad, Brooke manages to come up with a nice list of suspects.

I have to say the one who did it was not one I suspected. That's always the biggest factor for me in evaluating a mystery film. I don't think you'll figure it out either.