Murder at the Cornish Book Club
(Maddie Penrose #2)
By Fliss Chester
Join Maddie Penrose, scone baker, book lover and amateur sleuth, in her new home by the Cornish seaside. A member of her local book club has been murdered, and she’s on the case!
Maddie Penrose is settling into Cornish life with her fun and feisty grandmother, Nor. She throws herself into getting to know the locals, helping out at the village book club and enjoying the occasional G&T in the pub with handsome police officer DI Tom Trevelyan. But one sunny morning, her newfound peace is shattered when she spots Quentin, a member of the book club… dead, with a knife in his back.
To Maddie’s surprise, it transpires that almost all the other members of the book club have a motive to murder Quentin. Quentin’s own wife, a fellow reader, seems to be hiding something. The local romance author isn’t all sweetness and light, and another writer is keeping secrets. But is one of the book lovers in the sleepy seaside village really responsible for Quentin’s untimely death?
No sooner has the ink dried on the page of the first killing, another takes place – and the second victim is also a member of the book club! As Maddie frantically scrambles to get her clues down in black and white, she unearths a discovery connected to Nor. Is her gran the next victim on the list?
Can Maddie rescue Nor before her story ends in murder too? Or will the killer have the last word?
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My Rating:
Favorite Quote:
Celia Hollingsworth was a neat, prim woman, with short reddish-brown hair that never seemed to move. Her clothes seemed to follow suit, with an ironed crease down the front of her beige chinos and her white blouse collar standing up to attention too. It was no wonder she wasn’t at the midsummer swim this morning; Maddie couldn’t imagine what might happen if two such elemental forces of nature, equal in might, as Celia’s solid hair and the Celtic Sea, actually met.
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My Review:
I will admit to having the wrong end of the stick in trying to solve this murder mystery; the clever Fliss Chester had me going in circles with this one and had easily led me astray with her confounding misdirections. She is far too clever for me, and I was completely flummoxed and sputtering into my wine goblet at the reveal. The little pea in my brain was working overtime and is too embarrassed for me to tell you who I thought it was.
Fliss Chester lives in Surrey with her husband and writes historical cozy crime. When she is not killing people off in her 1940s whodunits, she helps her husband, a wine merchant, run their business. Never far from a decent glass of something, Fliss also loves cooking (and writing up her favorite recipes on her blog), enjoying the beautiful Surrey and West Sussex countryside, and having a good natter.
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