This was a really cute and relaxed mystery. Such a good commuting book. Plus Agatha Christie makes everything awesome by proxy. But I wasn't really super invested in any of the characters. I liked them and I disliked them. They seemed awfully stereotypical. The feisty one, the calm one, the sharp old lady, the annoying mother-in-law (and WOW was she annoying. Almost stopped reading), the obvious villain, the sweet but vulnerable woman, etc. And even though I enjoyed the story, there were 3 things about Hart's writing that specifically bothered me:1. Hart's use of parentheses and asides. Some of the parentheses didn't need to be there since they were just a continuation of the previous sentence, and also, the asides were kinda dumb.2. If I read one more thing about how adorable and perfect and handsome the main character's husband was, I was going to kill someone. I can see two people in love. That's great. Bully for you both. But she just FAWNED over him constantly. Every time she looked at him it was like she was 16.And 3. She title and name dropped like cuh-RAY-zee. It got really obnoxious after the first 50 pages. The book's about a mystery bookstore owner who solves mysteries that crop up in her town. Great. I love bookstores. It just seemed like every paragraph had a mention of this author, or this specific sleuth or this book. And I'm sure Hart has read all of those and absorbed them. But it felt like she was just showing off all the things she knew about mystery fiction. And I hate that.But I love mysteries and series. So I'll keep reading her books. Oh, this one is in the middle of the series, Death on Demand. I got so caught up with the Christie in the title, I forgot to check before I started reading. Bad Dominique! Anyway, read it. It's nice.
This is a good piece of escapist literature. The plot is a big Agatha Christie convention, organized and hosted by the proprietor of a mystery bookstore in coastal South Carolina. The convention, given over to a consideration of how wonderful Christie was, rocks on the edge of disruption by a hard-boiled ultra-macho mystery writer who attends apparently for the sole purpose of antagonizing all of the Christie fans. Just to make things more interesting, there appears to be someone else trying to kill the macho disruptor of the convention. Anyone who has organized a big event will appreciate the depiction of angst over getting registration, room assignments, and catering all to work perfectly (or at least without a major disaster). Fans of mysteries will enjoy all the expected elements of a classic mystery (clueless officialdom, skillful amateur sleuths, unusual weapons, etc.). As an academic I remain somewhat puzzled as to why announcing proof of a great "scandal" in Christie's life and/or writing would mean that the convention would be a failure. For an academic conference, this would merely assure the organizers that people would be talking about the conference for years afterwards and published proceedings would be likely sell briskly.
