Lavender Blue Murder

Lavender Blue Murder is the 21st Indigo Teashop Mystery by Laura Childs.  I have read every book in this series and while several of the past books in the series did not inspire me, this installment of the series was superb. In fact, it was better than anything I have read by her in about the past ten years.

Summary: 

Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier Drayton Conneley are guests at a bird hunt styled in the precise manner of an English shooting party which means elevenses, gun loaders, the drawing of pegs, fine looking bird dogs, and shooting costumes of tweed, herringbone and suede. As gunshots explode like a riff of Black Cat firecrackers, another shot sounds too close for comfort to Theodosia and Drayton. Intrigued but worried, Theodosia wanders into the neighbor's lavender field where she discovers their host, Reginald Doyle, bleeding to death.  His wife Meredith is beside herself with grief and begs Theodosia and Drayton to spend the night. Theodosia wakes up at 2 am to find smoke in her room and the house on fire. As the fire department screams in and the investigating sheriff returns, Meredith again pleads with Theodosia for help.

Review:

I devoured the book. The writing was tight and may have been her best novel to date.  I don't remember Childs ever writing an opening without excessive amounts of background information on her characters or the City of Charleston.  Lavender Blue Murder was more like a straight mystery novel than a cozy. There was more graphic descriptions of the murder scene than usual and since the murder occurred in a different county, the law enforcement characters were new.  I liked this anomaly as the Bert Tidwell detective character has been overdone and he has never grown as a character throughout the 21 books. Another character, Timothy Neville, is shown to be hanging out with his gay lover. Neville has not been identified as gay before.  Another change was having the genteel Theodosia and Drayton participate in a hunting party. While at first this seemed out of character, I liked the change of scenery for them. In prior murder scenes they are always standersby to the murder. Here, they are actively participating in the exercise that caused the murder.

I was pleasantly surprised by Lavender Blue Murder. 5 out of 5 stars.