Jillian is an American living in a charming English village with her husband Will, a minor aristocrat. Taking her morning walk one day, she comes upon the dead body of their neighbor, Anna. Murder most foul. Jillian, who has recently lost her job at the BBC and has time on her hands, decides to help the police solve the crime.

This novel won't work for everyone. It moves at a somewhat sluggish pace and Jill is frankly unlikeable. But as she conducts her investigation and interviews various people in the village, layers of secrets and lies start to reveal themselves and I found myself drawn in. Even though I figured out pretty early on who did the dirty deed, I really enjoyed picking up on all the meticulously placed clues that tied everything together at the end. Minor spoiler: But I did think it was completely unnecessary and jarring to set the ending 20 years in the future, and talk about all the ways life was different in 2037. It didn't add anything and was just weird.

A note about the audio book: one thing that I found unintentionally entertaining was listening to the narrator struggle - largely unsuccessfully - to conceal her Irish brogue and speak like an American, using a bizarre speech pattern that I suspect she learned from studying the Pink Ladies in "Grease." Several times in the novel the importance of accents in establishing one's place in society is discussed; and at one point British actors who had used bad American accents in films were mocked. ( )

‘’One does see so much evil in a village.’’
Agatha Christie

To use a quote of the Queen of Crime, spoken by the exquisite Miss Marple, in a review about a book that was mediocre at its best moments is almost a sacrilege. And yet, I confess I was fooled, because my expectations were quite high.

Jill, the main protagonist of the novel, discovers a dead woman, one of the most prominent members of Weycombe, and starts a personal investigation to find the solution to the crime, Perhaps, as a distraction to her own unhappy life and her problematic relationship with her husband. Who knows? And to be honest and forward, with such bad writing, who cares? The way the story unfolded made me lose all interest.

The start was more than promising, it was exciting and the first 100 pages just flew by. And then, it was a disaster. Endless pages full of uninspired descriptions of the hypocritical posh village residents, countless paragraphs about cosmetic products -which I really like, but not when I am reading a book that desires to be called a ‘mystery’’- and dialogues that sounded like a bad American sit-com. The only redeeming qualities were Jill, who was quite a sympathetic and realistic character, and the crime itself which was well-composed and with a few interesting twists. I didn’t get the feeling of a ‘’cozy’’ mystery, the atmosphere was dark, but badly depicted. In my opinion, the execution was very inadequate,the writing was simply not there.

Perhaps, many will succeed in overlooking the plethora of pages about rich and famous that had nothing to do with the mystery itself and enjoy the book much more than I did. For me, even finishing it was a struggle.

Many thanks to Midnight Ink and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


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I had a hard time staying interested in this. I love the Max Tudor series, this this stand alone didn't work for me. ( )

I really liked Max Tudor and Saint Just mysteries so my expectations were quite high. All these book were really page-turners, great plots and a lot of humour.
Unfortunately this book did not meet my expectation. For me it was like travelling in a grey landscape with lots of secrets, dramas and long discussion on the sociological side. The heroine sometimes is witty and sometimes is just acid.
It could have been a wonderful reading but it ended being a bit boring and was really hard to finish this book
Many thanks to Netgalley and Midnight ink for giving me the chance to review this book. ( )

The first thing I should probably say about Weycombe is this: if you've read other books by G.M. Malliet (as I have), do not read this one expecting more of the same. This is not a cozy mystery. It's a diabolical little treat told in the first person by the very snarky Jillian White.

Jillian is highly intelligent, highly observant, and always very aware of her status as an outsider. UK readers will be able to see how Americans view their country, and American readers will be able to benefit from her descriptions of life in the UK. Although Jillian and I have the same opinion about a few things (some facts about life in the UK and housecleaning come to mind), I'm not sure we'd be best buddies even if my occasional snarky periods coincided with hers. But being friends with the main character really isn't the point of the book.

Jillian's voice kept me under her spell throughout the book. Malliet has written a masterful character study. I can't pinpoint exactly when I began to get my first glimmerings of what might actually be going on in Weycombe, but I know it made me smile. What if.....? No, I am not going to tell you any more. I can't talk about the plot without giving important points away. All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and if you're the type of reader who doesn't mind a rather acid character or when an author wants to try something different, chances are you might enjoy it every bit as much as I did. I hope you do! ( )