“Cyanide with Christie” earns 5/5 Karma Surprises…Clever and Engaging!
Marvelous! I love Katherine Bolger Hyde’s series: the writers’ retreat, a small town, renewed love, and fascinating connections to classic literature. It's Christmas, Windy Corners is festooned in all the holiday trim, and Emily is nervously anticipating her first guests arriving at the writers’ retreat. Luke Richards, renewed love and local police lieutenant, is still somewhat worried about strangers living in the house with Emily. Some unofficial background checks might be in order. The visiting authors range from well-known to new-to-the-scene, inspired to blocked, open book to quietly suspicious. One guest is flippant, critical, and well lubricated rubbing everyone the wrong way, but along with a winter storm, it's the uninvited guest, oddly penned Cruella Crime, that causes the most disruption. So, when she ends up dead…poisoned! Everyone is a suspect, including old-fashioned Karma!
Katherine uses a third-person narrative, not a favorite perspective for me, putting us on the outside looking in on the drama. However, with a clever mystery (the murder takes more time to occur than I prefer), well-developed characters (I literally cringed, though happily, at some), vivid descriptions (beautiful, stormy, and delicious), and entertaining banter (illustrates tone and personality well) she kept me totally engaged. I have become invested in Emily’s life as she enjoys a pseudo-motherly connection with her young employee Katie, navigates the renewed romance with Luke, struggles with what and who she wants in her future, and pines about the absence of blood relations including being childless. In Crime with the Classics, I am interested in all the literary references, ins and outs of running the writers’ retreat, and life in the Oregon area I, too, have spent vacations. Katherine has penned a well-paced, well-written, and engaging story that I highly recommend! The end? Agatha would be proud of the final “Oh, my!”
