Krishna
This is a cozy mystery, the same genre as our previously reviewed books A Pint of Murder or Killed At The Whim Of A Hat
The author like to drop book names as many drop people’s names. She keeps referring to famous books and authors. Since many of them do not anything to advance the plotline, they jar a bit.
My reaction to this is that the story does not know where it wants to go, and so many sequences are not really relevant to the story. Let us start with the story itself.
Lila Wilkins lost a two bit job as a journalist when she was in mid forties. She saw an ad for intern for an intern for a Literary Agency and decided to apply.
She is called for an interview and meets Flora Meriweather, a children’s story writer before being ushered into the room of the editor in chief, Bentley Burlington-Duke and gets hired. Her mother, a Tarot card reader, implores her to leave the place immediately as ‘Death will visit her place of work and she is worried about Lila’s safety. Lila cannot afford to lose her lifeline and refuses.
She meets the obnoxious Zack Cohen who thinks all new employees are there to fetch him coffee. She also meets the agent Franklin Staffort who deals with nonfiction.
She also meets Marlette, who looks and behaves like a hobo. She wonders who let him into the building. He is gracious in an awkward way but is smelly and weird. Bentley had earlier referred to him as a ‘resident lunatic’ thus indicating that she had known him. Lila meets Jude Hudson, a gorgeous hunk who represents thrillers and suspense novels. Makayla, the gorgeous black girl works in the cafeteria. Marlette was the crazy incoherent dude who carried a query every day to the office, which was always ignored, unread.
When Marlette is found murdered by Lila, the scene for this cozy mystery is set. Now Bentley and Jude were the first to hear, and Carson Knight, a thriller writer, was also in the office then. So was Flora, and also Franklin, who claims to know CPR and tries to revive Marlette. The obnoxious Zach is there too. Marlette’s face is swollen, suggesting an allergic reaction as the reason for his death but Jude thinks that he may have been murdered.
She also meets the gorgeous editor of the romance section. When she goes away, she remembers that the dead man had a query in the flowers. She goes looking for it. She finds the flowers but no note in them (‘No Reading’). She goes to a coffee bar where her fired predecessor, Addison Eckhart, works now and asks that lady about Marlette.
In the meanwhile the story wanders about how her son Trey trashed the car and was irresponsibly uncontrite when asked about it; her growing attraction to the investigating officer Griffiths who is conveniently both the right age and unmarried; what’s more, he seems to be also interested in her.
She goes hunting to Marlette’s house with the help of her mother and finds a diary there. Copying it first, she dutifully sends it to the police for evidence. To her heartthrob Griffiths, actually.
She then goes to the playground and tries to see if he has left any note in a playground bird box and is disappointed not to find any. Mikayla, the coffee lady, is her willing companion in all these trips.
Meanwhile, Trey is fascinated by the commune and decides to stay there, much to the surprise of Lila. Also she finds that the house she had put up for sale was vandalized in a crude attempt to make her back off from investigating Marlette’s death.
She goes investigating stubbornly but the story just wanders: Is Mr xxx, who furtively goes every afternoon (but never aware of all the people watching or even Lila following – is he a bad man? No, by the simple device of peering into the house he visits through an open window, Lila finds out the real (kind of innocent) reason he does so. How absurd, the whole thing! If he had even an iota of sense, he could have easily made it difficult to detect. But no. He is set up as a suspicious man and eliminated by a stupid method of detection by Lila.
The first not so big surprise is the discovery that Marlette, who may have been framed by Sue Ann, may have been innocent. The next surprise is the realization that Luella, who is the romance author in Lila’s company, was really Sue Ann.
Lila goes spying and has reasons to believe that Luella poisoned Marlette with a bee venom pill and produced a dead bee to suggest that he died of bee allergy, which he was known to have. Before that, she foolishly confronts Luella, driving her to savage anger.
When Luella does not turn up the next day, Bentley sends her to fetch her as an important client was waiting with increasing impatience and anger. Lila finds Luella murdered. She has also finally found – with Sean, the policeman, who is assigned to the investigation and on whom she has a crush.
Let’s back up a little here. Do you see the problem? The story is a whole bundle of individual yarns, and besides, the supposed heroine Lila does nothing admirable except keep going after all the places Marlette had been to. And an idea, once developed, is dropped totally and the story just takes a turn into the next blind alley. It is irritating. Add the psychic mother of Lila, who is ridiculed by all but seems to possess real abilities to see into the future, Lila’s scooter obsession, and later, the manuscript of Marlette turning up as a promising story from another author called Carson – who now is suspected of both Marlette and Luella’s murders, and you have the feeling of having read a story plot that does not seem to know what to do with itself.
However, it works within the parameters of how a cozy mystery should be, and ends as you would expect it to end.
Not an exhilerating read. Let us say 3/10
== Krishna