2005 detection, second in Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series.
Someone's sabotaging the local chocolate shop, the self-made messiah
is angry that his latest handmaiden has been rescued, and someone's
criminally annoyed with the new tenant.
As with the previous book, this is a wallow more than it is Great
Literature. And that's just fine. I'd rather read an honest
self-indulgent wallow than something that aims for the stars and just
ends up making the author's personal hangups embarrassingly obvious.
So there are some new Good People to join the found-family, and
star-crossed lovers to be set right, and bad people who get their
desserts. There's no particular challenge to the puzzles other than
the sheer unavailability of information, but while this has the
trappings of a mystery story it's more of a fancy cake baked in the
shape of one.
At the same time this is set firmly in the real world; all right,
Phryne Fisher dives into the underworld sometimes, but Corinna has to
live with the fact that there are still going to be rapists and drug
pushers and all the rest out there even once these particular bad guys
have been brought to book. Unlike Phryne, she can't make everyone's
life as perfect as they'll allow; she just does the best she can.
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