Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425258859; 9781515950356
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.19; $24.99; $7.99 Amazon
July 7, 2015
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They say one's home is one's castle, but when it comes to Wynter Castle, Merry would like it to belong to someone else. But until a buyer bites, she could use some extra dough, so she decides to take in renters. The idea pans out, and Merry's able to find a handful of tenants eager to live in a real castle. The only problem is most of them are crumby, tea-swilling old biddies.
The Legion of Horrible Ladies, as Merry calls them, is led by the terribly nasty - and fabulously wealthy - Cleta Sanson. The abrasive Englishwoman keeps everyone whipped into a frenzy - until she meets an embarrassing end behind a locked door. Evidence reveals that Cleta was murdered, yet non one is privy to how the deed was done. Merry knows she must quickly find the killer before another of her guests gets greased...
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Merry Wynter inherited Wynter Castle from her late uncle, and has decided to temporarily take in renters. When her friend Pish says his aunt wants to stay, Merry is delighted. But Aunt Lush shows up with a group of four other women - all well-to-do, whom Merry has termed the Legion of Horrible Ladies. Now Merry's stuck with a demanding group of older women who don't seem to want to leave, and one of them - Cleta Sanson - outdoes all the others with her nasty barbs against others. But since she's paid for the time, Merry's stuck with her or faces a lawsuit.
When Cleta is found dead it's at first considered natural circumstances. But the coroner discovers that Cleta was murdered, and since the likely suspects are all staying at the castle, Merry doesn't want a murderer under her roof and does a little investigating on her own, hoping one of them will let something slip that leads her to the killer...
I was really hoping that this book, the third in the series, would improve over the last but it was not to be. A lot of the book rehashed the characters from other books and it got tiresome hearing how what a good friend Pish was. As a matter of fact, we really didn't get to know anything about most the guests, so never got to connect with them. As far as the locals go, I can't in all honesty like Juniper, who doesn't listen to her employer and is mouthy; nor Emerald, who seems to have "found religion" of a sort and spouts it to Merry every chance she gets. That's annoying in itself.
I also didn't feel the connection between Merry and Virgil. I get that they're interested in each other, but there's no spark at all. They seem to be just two people who sort of leeched onto one another for lack of better prospects around. I also wondered about Merry's age. When the books began she was thirty-nine, but now it's less than a year later and she's 'almost' forty-two? How fast do people age in this town? Some people even age backwards. In the first book, Hannah mentions how she's thirty (stated "Binny left when Hannah was fifteen so it must have been fifteen years ago"); but now she's in her twenties. Curious, indeed.
Of all the characters, I disliked Lauda as much as Cleta. She was pushy, annoying, and rude; and we're supposed to believe she was the poor put-upon niece. If I were Merry, I would have just handed her a refund check and told her to hightail it off my land. I wouldn't put up with a rude, nasty person like that. She really wasn't much different than her aunt and all Merry did was trade one for the other. In Lauda's case, though, she could have removed her from the premises. There's also something said to Lauda that pertains to the murder which didn't make sense to me because it would have to be proven in order to be valid.
I also didn't get why Merry would allow five people (plus herself, Pish, and assorted employees) to live at her home and cook for each and every one of them. Just because someone is paying you rent doesn't mean you're responsible for all their meals. I've yet to see a landlord provide meals to all their tenants (if people are staying for months you in effect become a landlord, not an innkeeper) three times a day. Maybe breakfast, but send those people out to eat. Not to mention the recipes in the back are horrendous - Chicken Spaghetti? Bacon and Peanut Butter Muffins? (What is it with the bacon muffins? She had bacon muffins in the first book, too). Just my opinion on the recipes, though...
Anyway, as you can tell I wasn't enthralled with this book. It was merely average as far as cozies go. There was nothing to make it stand out and even when Merry discovers a little bit more about her father's family in each book, it's not really interesting enough to make me care anything about any of them, Merry included. She's got a rather morose type of personality, lamenting about one thing or another all the time. At least she's beginning to change a little bit toward the end of the book, so that's a good thing.
At the end, while I didn't feel we were given any clues as to who the murderer was, it was satisfactory and everything came out alright. As I said, this is fine for a mystery and can be read in a few hours or so.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-English-Muffin-Merry-Mystery/dp/0425258858/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2432370851
More on Victoria Hamilton's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/victoria-hamilton/
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