A Treacherous Tale is the second in Elizabeth Penney’s Cambridge Bookshop series. While I want to like this series featuring an American who joins her mother and Aunt Violet to run the family bookstore in Cambridge, England, I’m afraid I’m not a fan of the female main character, Molly Kimball. I’ll stick with one of Penney’s other series, the Ravensea Castle one.
Kimball and Her mother left Vermont to move back to her mother’s home country after Molly’s father died. Now, Molly, a former librarian, is part owner of Thomas Marlowe-Manuscripts & Folios, along with Molly’s great-aunt Violet Marlowe. After Molly started an author event series, they invited Iona York, a local author to speak. Iona is the author of a classic children’s book, “The Strawberry Girls”, a book Iona wrote twenty years earlier, after the tragic death of her husband, Nate, who fell from a tower on a nearby estate. The book was based on people in the Yorks’ lives, including their two young daughters, Poppy and Rose.
Molly and her Aunt Violet visit Iona York at Strawberry Cottage to discuss the upcoming event. The cottage roof is being rethatched, and, as Iona gives them a tour of the garden, Molly finds the body of a man who appears to have fallen from the roof. What was antiques dealer Robin Jones doing on the roof? The police suspect he was pushed and it’s a tangled web that could trap Molly’s uncle, who is doing the rethatching, or Iona, or Iona’s daughter, Poppy, who has disappeared from her job at a local archaeological site.
There’s a nationwide hunt for Poppy. There are rumors of stolen antiquities on the black market. And, Uncle Chris might have a reason to kill the antiques dealer because Jones was dating Chris’ soon-to-be ex-wife. Too many people seem to have a reason to want the man dead. But, Molly wonders if it has to do with Nate’s death twenty years earlier.
I had problems with this book. It was a little too airy fairy for me, with the inclusion of the entire children’s book, featuring fairies, pixies, talking foxes, and brownies, a book that was supposed to point to a killer. But, my biggest peeve is with Molly herself. At almost thirty, she’s too impulsive, and knows it. She admits her curiosity and inexperience in solving crimes gets the better of her. She has to be warned to not post pictures of a treasure on social media. And, in my book, here’s the biggest problem. Although there are two other women running the bookshop with her, Molly is never there. She’s running around investigating, off with her boyfriend, and shopping. She’s the last person I’d ask to run a bookstore, let alone investigate a crime.
I like cozies, but I’ll always complain about an amateur sleuth who doesn’t do her actual job. I’ll skip Penney’s Cambridge Bookshop mysteries, and read her Ravensea Castle ones.
Elizabeth Penney’s website is https://www.elizabethpenneyauthor.com/
A Treacherous Tale by Elizabeth Penney. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2022. 288p.
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