The Queen of Poisons

April 15, 2024
The cozy yet high-mortality English village of Marlow is once again roiled by murder, this time involving a victim at the very top of the local food chain. Seeking zoning approval for the pod hotel she's convinced will make her a mint, dog walker Suzie Harris attends a meeting of the Marlow town council to get the lay of the land. Her attempt to pass herself off as having official business before the council is much less successful than the fatal poisoning of Marlow mayor Geoffrey Lushington, who gets a dose of aconite in his coffee, or maybe in his sugar, that stops the meeting before it starts. The obvious suspects are the four other council members who were present in the room where it happened: estate agent Marcus Percival, accountant Debbie Bell, architect Jeremy Wessel, and late-arriving Sophia De Castro, a homeopathic podcaster who actually grows aconite in her garden. But once DI Tanika Malik appoints Suzie and her partners in crime detection, Judith Potts and Becks Starling, as civilian advisers, they start asking nosy questions and moving from one suspect to the next with disconcerting dispatch, broadening the field to consider Alec Miller, the retiree who served tea at all the council meetings except this one, and an unknown blond man "average in...height and in weight" spotted in the immediate environs. In the end, Judith carries off sleuthing honors, though at a certain cost to her domicile. Ingenious, ultracivilized mental gymnastics guaranteed not to disturb your sleep.

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