Two Cozy Mysteries

A Brush With Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan
Minotaur Books, 2010

Penny Brannigan is a Canadian in her 50s who settled in the Welsh town of Llanelen years ago where she has made friends and started her own manicure business (there's a first!). In the previous book, The Cold Light of Morning, Penny helped solve a mystery with Detective Inspector Gareth Davies, now her beau. Now, Penny has achieved every reader’s dream – inheriting a rustic cottage with its own mystery!

Although Penny had realized that the charming Welsh cottage would require major renovations to shift it out of the 1960s, she had decided to live in it before undertaking any drastic changes so she could get a feel for it, get to know it, and discover what she liked and what she didn’t. She wanted to modernize it but in a way to respect its history and the memory of its previous owner.

When Penny finds a box of old letters, she learns her deceased friend Emma had a relationship with an artist who died in a hit and run in 1970. Because the crime was never solved, Penny decides she owes it to Emma to investigate the friend’s death – a quest that leads to the street John Lennon grew up on in Liverpool, of all places – and ultimately puts Penny into a collision course with a murderer. While this was a pleasant mystery, I didn’t think it had strong as sense of place as the first book. Penny lives in a friendly little village but it could be set anywhere, not Wales specifically, which is why I didn’t include this for Reading Wales Month.

Old World Murder by Kathleen Ernst
Midnight Ink, 2010

I was intrigued by the description of this book because it is set at a living history museum. Chloe Ellefson is escaping a failed relationship in Switzerland and returns home to be a curator of collections at Old World Wisconsin, not far from where she grew up:

Over fifty historic structures had been restored among the Kettle Moraine State Forest’s woods, prairies, and kettle ponds. Interpreters in period clothing brought the farmsteads, homes, and service buildings to life by telling tales and churning butter and making shoes and weeding gardens, and giving visitors as many participatory and sensory experiences as possible. Old World Wisconsin, the state’s newest historic site, was spectacular.

Chloe is excited about the new job although settling in is challenging and she is a little intimidated by her high-energy intern. And on her first day, she gets an unexpected visitor, elderly Mrs. Lundquist, who wants to reclaim a family antique donated to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin back in 1962 and transferred to Old World Wisconsin. Chloe want to help but the museum has no comprehensive inventory so she promises to research the “Hand-painted Norwegian ale bowl with cow heads, nineteenth century” and update its donor the next day. Unfortunately, when Chloe finally heads home after her first day, she sees Mrs. Lundquist and her Buick have suffered a fatal car crash. Roelke McKenna, a policeman who left Milwaukee to work in a rural community, thinks Mrs. Lundquist had a heart attack or a stroke but he listens when Chloe tells him about the meeting she had with Mrs. Lundquist. Chloe feels she owes it to Mrs. Lundquist to hunt for the bowl throughout Old World Wisconsin, although her new colleagues are uncooperative, hostile, or both, and the search pits her against a determined killer.

Chloe was too whiny a character to be appealing but I did enjoy the museum background and Wisconsin setting. Old World Wisconsin is a real place and the author worked there as an Interpreter and as a Curator, adding to the authenticity of the story. The unpleasant, condescending, or lecherous male characters Chloe faces are not unique to the nonprofit world but it does seem doubly unfair to have to cope with people like that in such an environment when you are worried about funding, visitors, and finding missing donations! There were a few surprises, which is a good thing, so long as the author isn’t just throwing them in for the sake of upending the reader.

I am not usually a cozy fan but I was curious enough about each of these books to finish them. They were mildly enjoyable but not memorable. 

These were my seventh and eighth mysteries of the year for the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.

Off the Blog: Do you know someone who lives in Wisconsin?  Voting in the State Supreme Court Election began yesterday and Elon Musk has been pouring in money for the Trump supporter, as well as funding a disinformation campaign against candidate Susan Crawford in which she is portrayed as soft on crime.  I walked past a Tesla dealership last night and was disappointed there was nobody protesting!