Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: How to Con a Con

This has to be my third favorite Aurora Teagarden movie after The Julius house and A bundle of trouble! A huge step up from the last few movies!

Ro (Candace Cameron Bure) and Nick (Niall Matter) press pause on their wedding planning when Aida (Marilu Henner), Ro's mother and Lawrenceton's best real estate agent, stumbles upon a murder. Her clients, Ben and Bianca Avery (David Lewis and Sarah Jane Redmond), are preparing a move but discover an outstanding $500k loan on their house. Neither seems to know anything about it, and soon after Ben starts looking into the matter, he ends up strangled to death on his living room floor.

Despite the over-convoluted mystery, and the story dragging a little, it's a fairly fun Aurora Teagarden mystery which features identity theft and a killer who likes to strangle his victims with a wire. It's very hard not to be charmed with this series, though, here, Lexa Doig isn't too whiny, which is a letdown. Love her moany character. Her character is the best and her and Roe work well together.

This movie was quite good, an intriguing mystery without any of the annoyances that plagued other movies. There were two main reasons I wasn't going to watch this. Sally Allison's whining and Aida Teagarden's narcissistic chauvinism.

Sally Allison didn't whine at all! Even when she was trying to get out of doing what Aurora wanted. It was refreshing! I'm so glad she is being portrayed as an adult instead of a whiny little kid.

Aida is no longer harassing Aurora to "get a man" and "dress to attract" and asking her fiancé to control her. She seems to have finally realised that her daughter is an independent adult who can make her own choices. She's still protective but is no longer treating Aurora as a child.

I'm assuming that this is down to the new director, if so I certainly hope he directs many more. This is how the series should be!

Cake tasting, 120 guests, and the big day looming Ro and Nick get embroiled in catching a con artist in "how to con a con" after one of Aida's clients ends up murdered. The con...get trusting clients to give up valuable information like social security numbers and then use the information to falsify documents like titles and borrow against their value.

Another great entry in the Aurora Teagarden Mystery series on Hallmark (one of my three favorite Hallmark series along with Hannah Swensen's Murder she Baked and Mystery 101). Wedding planning for Ro and Nick is intertwined with the Real Murders Club sleuthing to solve this mystery. Cue the murder board, which seems to be a mainstay in these Cody mystery dramas.

"The wedding should be about us, not our guests."-Nick

Philip helps Arthur with some police research, which puts him in the perfect location to hear police updates on the case that he is then able to share with the Real Murders Club. A trust-fund kid who lies about their Dad being alive, alibis that don't check out, and a murdered/dead man paying a bogus loan. Two murders both by strangulation with a cord...and the plot thickens.

I enjoyed the parallel scene with Lynne and the police reading the police report of the murder while the Real Murders Club reads a reporter's article about the crime. Fake name-fake loan. Aida may have the key to the mystery with the loan documents...something that lands Aida in the hospital and helps Aurora figure out what she really wants for her wedding.

"Ro and I have a theory"-Nick "oh! Have pigs begun to fly?"-Lynne

I have enjoyed every entry in this series and this is no exception. The characters are really well developed and the team is really tight. This is still a must see on my list.

This one was just meh. The killer was obvious right away. It seemed rushed and almost thrown together. It's not horrible it's just not the best in the series. I'm wondering how people who have watched Aurora before are rating this one high and claiming it's one of the best. It's not.