Laced with Poison by Meg London
Review by reacherfan1909
Series: Sweet Nothings, Bk 2 – books do not have to be read in order to follow storyline
Published: July 2013
Cozy mysteries have a long and honored history. Agatha Christie is usually the first name that leaps to people’s mind, but Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy Sayers all made it possible. Yes, there are far more female cozy writers that male, but some, like Jeffry Allen are showing real potential. The cozy market is now attracting writers like the Regency Romance market did 20 years ago. And like Regency Romance, there are a LOT of so-so books out there that people just rave about.
In her second outing with Emma Taylor and her well-traveled Aunt Arabella, the bottom line of the chic lingerie shop, Sweet Nothings, was still bleeding. The broken plate glass window would just add to the red ink despite the increase in sales. Emma returned to Paris, Tennessee to help manage the shop when her aunt asked for help in saving it. Who knew saving it would be so difficult? Then an opportunity is offered to them on a plate – a trunk show of their vintage designer lingerie at the luxurious home of Deirdre Porter. The Porter’s are one of the leading families of Paris and Deirdre has just the kind of friends who would love the exquisite pieces in their collection.
The trunk show is a big success – right up until and loud and abrasive Jessica Scott of the Sunny Days Retirement Community keels over after eating a flower topped cupcake. When she dies in the hospital, Emma starts getting involved because she knows the cupcake baker and her edible flower supplier is Emma’s best friend from high school, Liz. And sure enough, the new detective shows up at Liz’s house while she’s there. Despite the fact Liz had no foxglove in her own garden, not with her young children around, there is some in the neighbor’s yard.
But Emma has an inside source at Sunny Days. Sylvia, an elderly lady who helps at the shop with fittings and repairs just got moved there by her concerned son. Seems Jessica was a bully to everyone, not just her hapless and helpless secretary. But just before she had that fatal cupcake, Jessica told a story she got from one of their elderly patients, a former maternity nurse, about babies being switched in a hospital when a poor wife of a farmer who already had too many children and the wife of the wealthy town leader having her first child after years of trying, swapped her stillborn son for the healthy farmer’s son. Thanks to a massive accident and an overwhelmed hospital, only the 3 women knew. All towns have stories like those. Kind of like ghost stories.
So Emma turns her sights on trying to track that story down and learn more about what’s happening at Sunny Days, and Sylvia will help. Maybe. Because she’s being accused of stealing by another resident and Sylvia might just get thrown out. Then an attempt is made on the life of an elderly patient in the full nursing care part of the facility and Emma is sure her answers are there.
Though the characters are pleasing and the pacing is good, there is one major flaw. A fatal one for any mystery. If you can’t figure out who did it and why by page 50, you’ll lose your Nancy Drew card for sure. I kid you not, the ‘clues’ all but have neon signs on them. While a pleasant enough read, with the usual assortment if quirky characters, the mystery plot was so uninspired it was dead in the water. As a gentle and pleasant read, fine. Some good characters and the writing, while bland and lacking the sharp wit I favor, is still very readable. Dull for me, but readable. For any real mystery fan, it’s a bust.
I know I’m bucking the trend on Amazon, but Laced with Poison gets a C- (2.8*) from me. It has all the right elements for a cozy, except tension in the plot. And one unfortunate hint of yet another potential love triangle with Emma, Brian, and the new police detective. Let us all hope this series does not commit that over-worn trope in this series too.
I have a 3 and out rule on new series. If the first book shows potential, I’ll try book two. If that show improvement, then I’ll try book 3. But if by three I still think the series is treading water, it’s done. Unfortunately, cozy mysteries are overrun with generic plots and characters and the writing, while not bad, tends to uninspired. A lot of series get kicked off my lists by book 2. A few stand out and I’ll offer them below as better reads than this bland bit of nothing.
Recommended Instead: The Mall Cop series by Laura DiSilverio; Library Lover’s series and Cupcake Bakery series by Jenn McKinlay (though I didn’t like that last Cupcake Series book); Stay at Home Dad series by Jeffery Allen; and the White House Chef mysteries by Julie Hyzy.
