Looking for a good snowbound mystery to read, cozied up to your fire? Or someplace else cozy? Check out last week’s blog post.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
Another new-to-me author this week. I am reading Devil’s Breath, the sixth book in G.M. Malliet’s Max Tudor Mystery series. Not having read the previous books in the series, I am a little confused as to why the police would involve a former-MI5-operative-turned-vicar in the murder of a film star aboard a yacht. But whatever it takes to get the sleuth into the plot, I guess!
This is a nice closed-circle murder mystery, with the only people who could have committed the murder all being trapped on a boat together. But there are plenty of suspects. It seems like everyone had a motive to kill Margot Browne for one reason or another. There are jealousies, drugs, possible blackmail, and maybe more!
Nice colourful characters. Sleuth Max Tudor and his friend DCI Cotton are the only ones who recur from the other books in the series, as far as I can tell, so the others don’t have much backstory. I wonder exactly what the baron and his wife are hiding, if they are, in fact, a baron and baroness!
And I’m not yet sure what the “Devil’s Breath” title refers to. It doesn’t seem to be the scopolamine-producing plant, which I had first assumed. But we’ll see…
Her thoughts this evening on the unfairness of life may have sprung from the fact she would soon have to wrestle her spandex body shaper in what had become a daily face-off.
G.M. Malliet, Devil’s Breath
Having realized there is no escape from his past as an agent, Max has offered his services to MI5 on an as-needed basis. Now it’s time for him to follow through. The body of glamorous film star Margot Browne has washed ashore from a luxury yacht and Max’s former colleague wants his help to find the murderer.
It’s a perfect “closed circle” murder since victim Margot must have been killed by one of the actors, stylists, screenwriters, or second-tier royalty aboard. The investigation into Margot’s lurid past uncovers a host of motives—it seems she was not the only person on board with a secret they’d kill to keep.
