About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

EGGS IN PURGATORY
by Laura Childs
Berkley, December 2008
289 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425224953


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

EGGS IN PURGATORY kicks off Childs' newest series, to run in parallel with her scrapbooking and tea shop books. As I always expect from Childs, it's a light but energetic read, exciting all the way through and rounded off with a generous helping of tips and recipes. It wasn't until I started thinking about this review that I noticed any flaws at all.

There are a couple of minor flaws. The worst, which will only affect people who like to play the home game, is that not enough evidence is given to figure out whodunit before the heroine does. This heroine, Suzanne Deitz, is one of a trio of women of a certain age with a need to start over and thus they have opened the Cackleberry Club, a single building that combines a breakfast diner, a tea room, a specialty bookstore, and a knitting shop. It may sound like a cynical ploy to meld several specialty subgenres into one, but I'd certainly spend time at such a place if it existed – and in this economy, it would make sense to blend a series of weaker businesses into one stronger whole.

And business is certainly strong at the Club, especially when the rubberneckers start showing up after the town lawyer is shot to death in the parking lot. While dealing with the crowds, Suzanne also has to deal with her friend's disintegrating marriage, the increasingly erratic and threatening behavior of the man who delivers the eggs, and dark questions about her dead husband's business dealings. Add in the murdered lawyer's possibly estranged best-selling author wife and an Amish-style cult on the town fringes, and things are hopping.

Childs does tend to lean on what she knows best - I hope she ensures that Tea Shop and Cackleberry fans don't end up reading the same recipes and articles - and she leans heavily on the trope that the only cop in town is an overwhelmed good old boy who needs Suzanne's help to do his job. (The state police are mentioned once and then evaporate.) So the story leans more on characterization than procedure or (despite all the subplots) a complex mystery. Fortunately, Childs is at her best writing engaging characters.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, January 2009

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]