Poison, anyone?

 

Hello and welcome to our Book Review, with added Selfie!

Mrs H has been very busy this week, washing all the fine bone china in the house. Not that she has OCD, though I suspect she will have dishpan hands if she's not careful, MOL

No, what has caused the sudden flurry of suds, is the fact that we have just finished the second in the Murder Most Unladylike series of murder mystery books (or in the USA: A Wells and Wong Mystery.)

This one is entitled: Arsenic for Tea. For our USA pals, this is titled: Poison Is Not Polite.

 

What you need to know:- Having not only survived, but also solved the murders of two teachers and one pupil at their boarding school, Daisy and Hazel, our lead protagonists return to Daisy's parents home and estate called Fallingford. It should be a fun time as it happens to be Daisy's birthday.

The guests start to arrive and amongst them there is a murderer! Yup, deep in the countryside, and during terrible flooding that effectively isolates the house, one of the guests, Mr Curtis, is poisoned.

When he turns out to be a thoroughly obnoxious ne'er do well that was intent on robbing Daisy's parents, Lord and Lady Hastings, of their prize entiques, you'd have been forgiven for saying 'Thank heavens and good riddance!' Of course the plot is far better than that, and with true mystery style, all roads – and grains of arsenic, point to mild mannered practical joker, Lord Hastings himself!

With the fear the detectives may be next on the list for the murderer, the race is on for Daisy to prove her father innocent before the police arrive the next morning, thus saving him from a fate, well, I'm sure you can imagine!

I have to say, Miss Robin Stevens really has given us a great plot line; full of great new characters (that we will meet again), twists and turns, and a barrel load of red herrings that flap this way and that. I have to confess, that Mrs H did not solve this one, though she does say she had a 'hunch'. Yes, well, on that basis I say it is two nil thus far to the skills of Hazel and Daisy – ably abetted by some of their boarding school pals too.

If you would like to know how this fiendishly clever mystery ends, then do dash on over, in a suitably ladylike manner, and grab yourself a copy from your local bookshop (please do support these wherever you can) or visit Amazon where you should be served a midnight feast worth of mystery at the click of the button.

Anyways, enough of book reviews for this week, what I guess most folk want is a selfie!

I hope you all enjoyed this review, and picture of me AWAKE, which Mrs H says is a rare moment indeed given it's now seemingly dark most of the day and raining 50% of the time. 

Oh, if you were wondering why Mrs H was so fervant with her dish washing, well it seems that a certain gardener, not mentioning any names, NED, had been using our best china cups to measure out his weed killer and insecticide. Not just once mind, but several times —  Talk about Murder Amidst the Rose Beds!

Till next time, when we will be giving you the low down on the third book – assuming Mrs H can read it quickly enough, we wish you all a safe, happy, and well read week!

Till later, Toodlepip and Purrs!

ERin