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It's painfully obvious that Churchill has long since lost interest in the Jane Jeffry series. THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST is chapter after chapter of random filler, a murder mystery in name only since no one, including the amateur and professional detectives, spends any of their time actively investigating whodunit. The plot revolves around Jane finally deciding that she will marry Mel. Mel's mother and Jane's ex-mother-in-law are as unpleasant about this as possible, the former taking over and arranging the ceremony to her satisfaction while the latter tries to disinherit Jane from the family business. In the meantime Mel, deciding 16 mysteries too late that Jane needs to learn self-defense, enrolls her and her best friend Shelley in a four-session Women's Safety class. It's a particularly poorly-titled seminar, since two of the members end up dead. The premise could have been interesting if Churchill could bring herself to write about it. Instead, the class is reduced to a collection of cliches, mostly travel-related, that have little to do with personal safety, nothing to do with women in particular, and can all be found with five minute's work on Google. If I had paid money to be taught self-defense and then was told that black luggage is hard to pick out at the airport luggage carousel and that few women in Saudi Arabia are given educations, I'd have been at the office screaming for my money back before the first break. Instead, Jane and Shelley keep insisting on how valuable the information was and how enlightening it was to be told to look alert wherever they went. You'd think that by the time they'd reached middle age, not to mention their 15 previous adventures, they would know this already. But this was just the beginning of the digressions. When Churchill can't avoid discussing the deaths by talking about the wedding plans, she throws in details of the extension on Jane's house, and when that runs dry, she tosses in complete non sequiturs, including a description of clumping kitty litter and how to use it, pompom-making instructions, large quotes from Jane's latest book, even more paranoia-inducing travel tips, a complete recipe for salad dressing, and how-to-write exercises. I wish she'd spent less time telling the reader about that last and more time applying them. Still, it seems as though the Jeffry series is about to be put out of the reader's misery. The little time Churchill spends on plot development involves wrapping up loose ends or getting rid of characters. And the only time she advertises her own writing – Churchill coyly slides a third-person reference to herself in a list of actual mystery authors that Jane reads – it's to mention her other mystery series. There is no encouragement for the new reader to go back and look at the previous books in this one. The first seven Jane Jeffry books have long been personal favorites of mine. It's such a pity that Jane is going out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, January 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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