Lavender Blue Murder by Laura Childs

Lavender Blue Murder by Laura Childs ISBN-13: 9780451489661 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: March 3rd 2020

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier Drayton Conneley are guests at a bird hunt styled in the precise manner of an English shooting party. But as gunshots explode like a riff of Black Cat firecrackers, another shot sounds too close for comfort to Theodosia and Drayton. Intrigued but worried, Theodosia wanders into the neighbor's lavender field where she discovers their host, Reginald Doyle, bleeding to death.

His wife, Meredith, is beside herself with grief and begs Theodosia and Drayton to stay the night. But Theodosia awakens at 2:00A.M. to find smoke in her room and the house on fire. As the fire department screams in and the investigating sheriff returns, Meredith again pleads with Theodosia for help.

As Theodosia investigates, fingers are pointed, secrets are uncovered, Reginald's daughter-in-law goes missing presumed drowned, and Meredith is determined to find answers via a seance. All the while Theodosia worries if she's made a mistake in inviting a suspect to her upscale Lavender Lady Tea.


My Review:
Lavender Blue Murder is a cozy mystery. It's the 21th book in a series. You don't need to read the previous books to understand this story, and this book didn't spoil the previous ones.

The main characters acted fairly mature and respectable in this book, though Theodosia went all James Bond at the end. She asked good questions about the murder and found a number of people who had motives and opportunity. There weren't a lot of clues (beyond possible motives), so whodunit was not obvious (but was guessable). I was baffled as to why Theodosia didn't tell her boyfriend where she was rather than saying she was on the tail of a suspect and then hanging up. But I much prefer a save-the-day heroine to a perpetual victim, so I'm not really complaining.

There was a couple uses of "mild" bad language and no sex. Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable story.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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