I read the most delightful book this month, the third of three really good books that I enjoyed (see my Mid-month Review in the previous post). June was a good book month.
Cold Clay by Juneau Black The second entry in a series of three books (to date). Shady Hollow is a small, quiet town inhabited by animals (yes, animals). Reminiscent of Susan Wittig Albert's Cottage Tales series, 8 equally delightful (and I was so sad when Ms. Albert stopped writing the series), this charming book has memorable characters and a lovely setting (and a map--you know how I love a book with a map!). Vera Vixen, fox reporter, is our amateur detective, and she is ably assisted by her best friend Lenore Lee, the raven who owns Nevermore Books, and her boyfriend, Deputy Orville Braun, bear. I loved this book. It was so charming and sweet, the animal characters kind and realistic and relatable. Shady Hollow and its inhabitants were enchanting and I immediately looked for the other two books in the series. The mystery is well plotted, the characters are fully fleshed out, and while there was one aspect of the whodunit conclusion that was a little bit of a stretch to believe, it was still a great read. It did not escape my notice that Vera appears to be a vegetarian, and every meal she has at Joe's Mug read deliciously. I am eager to return to Shady Hollow, especially during these tumultuous and scary times. A sweet, innocent murder mystery that is appropriate for both advanced child readers and adults--perfect.
Steeped in Evil by Laura Childs I know I vowed to stop reading this series, but I thought one from earlier in the series might still be good, without all the annoying inconsistencies that beset the more recent Tea Shop Mysteries. And I enjoyed the first half of the book. Theodosia was not annoying and arrogant in her sleuthing, the professionals were not ridiculed as incompetent, and I had high hopes. And then it started, first with a few little things: Theodosia never tells Maggie that Andrew is looking to buy a house, just that she knows someone who could use a realtor, yet Maggie jumps to the assumption he's a buyer. OK, that's perhaps not an unreasonable assumption; he's either buying or selling. And then world class tea sommelier Drayton doesn't know what a Banbury tart is? And he says "Seriously?!" like a tween girl? Drayton is a little fussy but very gentlemanly, an American version of the stereotypical Englishman, and his exclamations and vocabulary would not include 'Seriously?!" And speaking of the food, how does Haley manage to do all the cooking, cleaning, and planning for not only the tea room but also the catering events? Miss Dimple is there to help serve when needed, but honestly, there's no way Haley could do all that work, especially if the Indigo Tea Shop is open 6 days a week (I think they're closed one day a week, but even if closed for two, it's just not realistic that she has no help). I've suspected for years that Ms. Childs employed a ghost writer, and the fact that Theo's boyfriend Max actually says the sentence "We're going to pretend we're not snuggle bunnies?" proves it. Then it was there, in full force: Theo muses that maybe the sheriff would figure the mystery out. "Or maybe pigs would sprout wings and fly." At this point, Theo has exchanged about 12 words with the sheriff, so how she has the temerity to think she judge his progress in his investigation is beyond annoying. She gets very annoyed when the manager of Smiley's won't let her interrogate one of his employees when that man is supposed to be working, and the entire exchanges when she trying to wheedle her way into the restaurant were embarrassing at best and insufferable at worst. They witness the car accident, but don't call 911, and Drayton was so upset he couldn't dial those 3 numbers? That is not the competent man we know. But the most egregious violations were this: private hospital rooms do not share a bathroom, so the entire scene where Theo escapes discovery by sneaking out the shared bathroom was ridiculous. Clearly the ghost writer backed themselves into a corner and created this plot device to fix a major shortcoming in the story. But that episode was surpassed by her behavior at the silent auction, when, instead of voicing her suspicions about the bottle of wine to either law enforcement or the auction organizers, she grabs it and opens it to prove her point. Stop insulting your readers! Cell phones have the numbers and/or names of incoming calls showing nice and bright and big right there on the screen, so Theo would never have been surprised by who was calling her; she'd have known the instant she looked at the phone. This is beyond insufferable and beyond excuses. Stop dialing it in, Ms. Childs. Either slow down your mass production of multiple series or perhaps just stop writing.
Murder on the Moor by Julianna Deering Drew and Madeline Farthering are asked by his former schoolmate, Beaky, to look into some mysterious happenings in the moor that surrounds his estate. His wife Sabrina has been spooked by noises when walking her dog and feels certain someone has been watching her. Drew and Madeline immediately drive up to the estate to look into things, while their friend Nick impersonates a rough traveling man so that he can investigate things from the village's perspective without suspicion. Set in the 1920s, this is reasonably accurate portrayal of that time between the wars when society and economies were in turmoil, and the landed aristocracy was having to face the new realities of the early twentieth century. I liked the book, although Drew and Madeline were a little too cutesy for me. The secondary characters were interesting and useful and not merely there to fill in the pages; they each advanced the story in important ways. All in all, an nice, quick read.
