La belle Italienne

6/10 - pretty average Garage Sale Mystery...not the best, not the worst

This was one of my favorites of the series. I loved the "Storage Wars" style backstory, and the setting of the storage building gave a creepy feel.

Garage sale guru Jennifer Shannon (Loughlin) discovers a dead body (nothing new there!!) in the storage locker she and business partner Dani (Strange) have purchased at auction. When further inspection of the locker's contents reveals plaster "death masks," and one of those masks perfectly matches the dead woman's visage, Jennifer's "inner sleuth" kicks into overdrive as she works to piece together the clues that will lead to the killer.

Another fast-paced, well made Garage Sale mystery with the "locker" idea and the location being a nice touch. It looks quite creepy. There's not many suspects, but the identity of the killer came as a surprise. Misdirection is used well here.

This Garage Sale Mystery: The Mask Murder has Lori Loughlin going to an auction at a storage facility center to purchase sight unseen the contents of a storage locker. I kept thinking about Forrest Gump in that you don't know what you're getting until you open it up.

When she opens a second one she discovers the dead body of Rachelle Gillis a woman who worked in the place. She was by all who knew her a nice girl who everyone liked. Either the motive for killing her was something in her personal life or it involved her job because there were definitely shennanigans being pulled by those who owned the place.

The rest of her family is involved in some Habitat For Humanity type project even her computer wise son Connor Stanhope. He lends her no assistance in this story.

The motive is either personal or it involed where she worked. The film gradually veers from one to the other providing tantalizing clues. It was nicely done that way and the murderer is one whom we see very little of throughout the film in the end.

One of the better stories in this film series.

There are two things I really enjoy about the Garage Sale Mystery series...the relationships between friends and the tight knit family AND the introduction to antiques that I don't know a lot about. In this episode it was death masks and specifically La Belle Italienne. This lead me down a little rabbit hole that involved Dutch paintings and Resusci Anne...this is what I love about this series!

Like the first episode, this one involves Jen and Dani bidding on a storage unit which leads to viewing a second unit owned by the same defaulting owner...but this one has a dead body in it. I love the running joke that Jen is going to stay out of the investigation but keeps getting sucked back in.

I really appreciate the familiar characters...like our punny Medical Examiner, Dr. Tramell or good detective and friend Detective Lynnwood. Both Dani and Hannah seem to finally have boyfriends (and Hannah is back with a cop again...Officer Ryan).

This was a decent mystery and I really enjoyed Samantha Ferris, even though she played a shifty character. This might not be my favorite of the mystery series on Hallmark, but right now it is one I recommend.