I accepted an e-copy of Jean G. Goodhind‘s A Claim to Murder for review.
Life couldn’t be sweeter for Honey Driver, floating around the Med on her own private yacht, with her dishy detective husband Steve.
But dark clouds are gathering on Honey’s perfect horizon. And the forecast looks like murder!
When Honey’s love boat sinks in a freak accident, she has no choice but to return to rain-drenched Bath. But now that Honey needs him, her insurance broker, silver-tongued Norman Glendower, is nowhere to be found.
He’s not at his luxury offices in town and he’s not answering his phone.
Honey could kill Norman for leaving her in this fix. But what if someone got there first?
Behind the gates of leafy Regency Gardens, the exclusive complex where Norman lives, something is terribly amiss. Norman’s mewling cat leads a curious neighbour straight to his dead body!
He’s been bludgeoned and left for dead on the pristine tiles of his designer kitchen. Which of his many enemies was the one to strike the fatal blow?
Honey’s on the case — with a killer watching her every move . . .
I’m going to preface this review with the caveat that I’m not a massive reader of mysteries (cozy, British, or otherwise). This one came across my TBR largely by accident. But I gave it a good go, and I didn’t hate it. That’s faint praise, I know, but the most honest expression of how I feel.
I didn’t hate it. I liked that the characters are older but still active and with internal lives of their own, and honestly, I liked them well enough. But I was bored for a lot of the book. I didn’t feel the loss of a quarter of a million dollar investment was adequately mourned, and very little seemed to actually happen, investigation-wise, until right at the end. And then I thought the narrative treatment of a well-pulled-together, influencer-type woman to be clichéd. It has just a little too much of a whiff of shaming women who are proud of or use their looks for their own (as opposed to the patriarchy’s) gain.
All in all, this was middle of the road for me. But it might be a bigger winner for someone who especially likes cozy, British mysteries.
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