Honey Drop Dead

Laura Childs, where have your books been all my life?! This is the first of the Tea Shop Mysteries that I've read (nothing like jumping in on number 26, right?), and it definitely will not be the last.

Theodosia Browning (love that name!) hosts special event teas as part of her business. The book opens with a Honey Bee Tea she's hosting for a local art gallery, hoping to help them get their name out there and grow. But the tea is brutally disrupted when a fake beekeeper douses the guests with who knows what chemicals and a local political is shot dead. The police are investigating, of course, but it seems to be going nowhere fast. Knowing the powers that be may not want certain pots stirred, Holly, the gallery owner, asks Theodosia to do her own digging into the matter.

I love Laura Childs' characters! The names are wonderful: Theodosia. Drayton. Osgood Claxton III (doesn't that one just ooze “smarmy politician”?). Their personalities are just what I'd expect. Theodosia is smart, headstrong, and a shrewd businesswoman. Drayton, a tea sommelier (I didn't even know there was such a thing), is very good at what he does, and he's a good friend who'll go with Theodosia into sticky situations even when it's against his better judgment.

Turns out there are a lot of people who might have rejoiced to see Osgood Claxton III dead. Lamar Lucket, his political opponent? Mignon Merriweather, his soon-to-be-ex-wife? Ginny Bell, the supposed “other woman”? Booker, an artist who lost out on grant money because of Claxton? Childs tosses out a lot of possibilities and leads the reader on a merry chase after each one.

With a plot that moves along briskly, an intriguing mystery, and recipes at the end of the book (my favorite!), this is a sweet cozy mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed it, stayed up past my bedtime reading it, and can't wait to go back to the start and read the entire series.