While looking ahead at upcoming releases, I came across The Body in the Kitchen Garden, the sequel to The Potting Shed Murder. The sequel sounded intriguing and from time to time I’m quite partial to a cosy mystery and it has been a while since I read one. Why not see if I still enjoy them? So off to the library I went.
Daphne, her husband, and her three children move to the English countryside after a close call with their safety in south London. They settle in Cranberry Farmhouse and after about ten months in the village of Pudding Corner, there is a murder in the adjacent village.
The murder only happens at 18% in, but the exposition building up to that point is rather lovely. It didn’t set my world on fire, but I found it so soothing. In fact, that is my overwhelming feeling for most of The Potting Shed Murder: I was soothed. More on that later.
Initially, the dialogue is a bit stilted and awkward, but that isn’t something that affects the rest of the writing. The narrative is smooth, tight and really invited me in. After the murder, the dialogue becomes a lot more convincing and enjoyable to read.
As an unapologetic curious/nosy person, I appreciated the gradual reveal of village secrets. While the narrative is told from multiple points of view, it’s always a third person narrator that often reveals salacious details. I loved it.
I also really enjoyed how well-rounded the secondary characters were and how often they avoided being stereotypical residents of an English village as often appear in cosy mysteries. Yes, there are familiar characters: the local doctor, the principal of the village school, the local shopowners, etc., but they have rich internal lives that are explored thoroughly.
Daphne is a Black woman, and a second generation immigrant. There are frank discussions of race and her experience, and of her feelings about raising biracial children in a predominantly White area. There is also mention of Black History Month and Black Lives Matter, which provide a specific context that I appreciated.
I realise this is a bizarre thing to say about a book centred on death but if you’ve read a cosy mystery I think you’ll get what I’m saying: this is a mostly restful story. It would often send me to sleep at night before my usual bedtime, not because it was boring but because it was just so calming and I could feel my whole body relax when I read it. Because of this it took me ages to finish.
It was so calming that I wondered if I shouldn’t rely on an old trick and read multiple books at once. But each time I opened my e-reader, I would see The Potting Shed Murder there and the curiosity would get me. What would happen next? And so I was a one-book woman for the duration.
Overall, I enjoyed how the story unfolded. The plot was clear, logical and – towards the end – quite thrilling. I say that because at around 70% things speed up A LOT and become more intense from that point on. I had to take little breaks from reading because the suspense was stressing me out. As calming as the first 70% was, the last 30% was suspense-filled. This plot structure really worked for the story. I was delighted by the arrival of each clue and how it unfolded for our amateur sleuth.
When secrets start to unravel in full, I really felt the emotional impact of the victim’s death. I would say this differs from the other cosy mysteries that I have read in which the deaths didn’t have much of an emotional impact on me. This one did. I felt despair and loss as I read about lives half lived and lost too soon. So keep that in mind if you’re feeling particularly fragile.
I recommend this book to anyone in the Bitchery looking for a cosy mystery that finds its own lane while still being a very good example of the genre. I will absolutely be reading the sequel, The Body in the Kitchen Garden, when it is released on May 29th. I want more time in the village of Pudding Corner.
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