book 36-37
The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa Hart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was pleasantly surprised by this impulse buy. It was fun having a historical mystery that isn't in the Victorian era (It's set in 1703). Cecily Kay has been sent back to England by her husband for being too inquisitive and discovering something in the company that he should have. He does allow her to stop first at the titular cabinets of Barnaby Mayne to research some of the plants she has pressed on her tour of the middle east.
In the days before public museums, cabinets of curiosities amassed by the wealthy like Barnaby Mayne are where the lucky few go to see objects collected from around the world. It was the infancy of scientific collecting and catagorizing. When Cecily arrives, she finds a childhood friend, Meacan is also there, now a sought-after scientific illustrator and the two women reconnect but Meacan has a secret of her own.
In short order the pompous and unfriendly Mayne is murdered, his young assistant blurting out he'd done it before running away. Cecily doesn't believe the assistant as the killer adds up and tries to figure it out on her own, impeded by the fact the man's widow wants to sell off the cabinets as fast as possible as she hates it (and London she has lived apart from her husband for years) and by the constraints on women in the early 1700s.
I found the mystery engaging and I very much liked Cecily and Meacan. I enjoyed the twists and turns of the story. It was also nice to see slightly older, married/widowed women as the protagonists. All too often it's either the young or the elderly we see as amateur sleuths. I'm hoping there'll be more adventures (which the open ending suggests there will be).
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A Matter of Hive and Death by Nancy CoCo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received this as a goodreads giveaways which in no way influenced my review. This was a tough one to review because I did like parts of it but a) I wondered was the editor asleep at the switch b) had anyone done even 1 minute of research which really did ruin this for me and that 3 star review seems generous.
things I liked, officer Hampton, Aunt Eloise, Porsche and Wren (our point of view character is mostly okay). So we're off to a rocky start if our sleuth is only mostly okay. Wren and her aunt rescue Havana Brown cats and her cat Everett is a fun part of the story. Wren owns the Let it Bee boutique and somehow in between raising her own hive of bees in the store and making all the lip balm, salves and candles all night and working the shop all day still has time to solve cases. Now I didn't read book one (at this point I prefer to go to book 2 in a cozy series because we know how the first one goes, the amateur sleuth is blamed (or a close friend/relative) for a crime and that's how they start on the path. I would love to see one start in media res one of these days.
Wren's friend Elias is collapsed by his hives when Wren arrives and another bee wrangling friend, Klaus comes under suspicion. Confident Jim Hampton, the town detective will mess it up,Wren involves herself and thinks maybe this is tied into a rash of vandalized hives up and down the Oregon coast. In the middle of this is a UFO festival (that I wish had been more prominent the build up to it ended up fizzling into a lot of noise about nothing) and the return of Wren's ex fiancee (because it wanted to hint at a love triangle which also fizzles out in this book so if you hate those no worries)
My problems were this, it needed editing. I'm not just talking correctly spelled but wrong words (It's vial not vile) but actions that were very distracting like at one moment Wren is standing on the bumper of the truck but in the next the tailgate is down (you can't stand on the bumper then). Porsche had to take a day off because the kids had the stomach bug but in the space of a couple paragraphs, Wren is like I hope you had fun on your day off and then Porsche is joking about pretending the kids are sick next time. Another time another bee keeper reminds her that hives are warm and humid (more on that in moment) but then she suddenly realizes in the next chapter oh hey hives are warm and humid, no you didn't realize it. You were literally told that just three pages ago. Someone should have caught this stuff and didn't.
I was also not impressed with how petty Wren can be in regards to Officer Hampton. I get that he gave her a hard time last book but she goes off on childish tantrums when he won't tell her things because it's literally illegal or ill advised to do so (Even Porsche comments on how unfair Wren is being). For me I can only do cozies one way, if the amateur sleuth is dating/married/related to the actual cops because otherwise what's stopping them from imprisoning them for interfering with the investigation. this looks like it will go to her and Hampton dating but still her attitude is like a cheese grater on skin.
But what killed it for me was the motive behind the crime. Pure one star there. Non-spoilery let's just say what happened could not possibly happen and literally 2 minutes work on the internet proves that which I did to write the review (I knew these things but I wanted to see how readily available it was. Answer, very) If I can destroy your climax in 90 seconds of Googling you've failed as a story teller. If you want to know more, look at the spoilers
So Wren figures out they're hiding something in the hives and that's why they're being vandalized. Setting aside how dumb it would be to vandalize your hiding spot and call attention to it, let's say that is what they're doing. At first Wren thinks it's drugs which at least would be more plausible. No it's cat semen for cloning pets for the rich and famous. Let's assume this elaborate ploy of hiding the vials in the hives is necessary, it could never happen. semen for artificial insemination MUST be frozen. There is no ands ifs or buts about that and seriously all CoCo had to do was type in artificial insemination for cats into a search engine to find this out before deciding it was plausible. It must be kept at 32 degrees or lower. The optimal temperature for the inside of a beehive is 80 degrees. Needless to say it would destroy the semen specimens. I mean how hard was that to find out So given how easy it was to research the impossibility of this crime I felt the author and editors find the readers to be gullible at best.
Would I read another? Free from the library maybe. I wouldn't pay for this not after that breach of trust.
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