MADRIGALS AND MAYHEM

Christmas in Cambridge is a new experience for American Molly Kimball, though murder is not.

Molly and her widowed mother have moved to England to help her great-aunt run the family’s 400-year-old bookstore. Molly—who’s already made friends, acquired a delightful boyfriend from an aristocratic family, and helped solve several mysteries—now meets and befriends Charlotte Pemberly, who’s just inherited a wonderful toy store from her grandfather, much to the dismay of his thrice-married widow, Althea, and her family. When Charlotte gives Molly a tour of the shop, they discover Barnaby—her grandfather’s step-grandson—deathly ill and call for an ambulance, narrowly saving his life. Then his sister Tori shows up, followed by the police, who are suspicious about some cakes he’d eaten at the store and suggest that Molly’s best friend, bakery owner Daisy, may have made them. Daisy says the box is hers but the cakes definitely aren’t, since she would never use blue frosting. Considering the family feud, Charlotte looks like a suspect, but Molly thinks it’s more likely she was the target of the poisoned cakes—after all, they were left in her shop. When Charlotte asks for help, Molly is more than willing to try solving the mystery. She meets Charlotte’s awful step-family and their friends, even joining her boyfriend to sing in a play Althea is staging. It will take a lot of luck to find the answer before Charlotte becomes the next victim.

A complex mystery featuring the historic charms of Cambridge and a likable, clever sleuth.