The Queen of Poisons, Robert Thorogood

THE QUEEN OF POISONS is book number 3 in The Marlow Murder Club, which is also now a TV series. Not at all surprising, it definitely has a "perfect for TV feeling" to the stories, it's quite good fun, and written by Robert Thorogood, the man behind the Death in Paradise series. 

The "crime fighting trio" in this series is made up of Judith, a retiree who keeps herself busy setting crosswords for a newspaper, and nude swimming in the Thames that meanders past her ramshackle old mansion. Then there's Suzie, the salt-of-the-earth type dog walker. She has a long standing house renovation in the earlier novels, a lot of crazy ideas, she's the go-getter one of the group. And finally Becks, the prim, very proper, baking, housewife of the local Vicar, who came to the idea of Vicaring late in life, although you could never accuse Becks of not taking on the role of "Vicar's wife" wholeheartedly, even if there is much about the decision that still baffles her. These three total strangers are flung together in the first novel, investigating mysterious goings on in their local community, with the somewhat reluctant approval of DS Tamika Malik. By this, the third novel, they are "police consultants" in a sort of half-in-the tent manner, when the local Mayor of Marlow dies suddenly during a town council meeting. A meeting and death that coincidentally, Suzie witnessed.

The mayor was poisoned and oddly for a story of this nature, a motive proves hard to find. He was universally liked, admired and even loved. His fellow councillors not so much though, but the big sticking point is how the poison was administered, and here, it's partly Suzie's witness testimony, partly Judith's thinking inside and outside of boxes, and a fair bit of tenacious following up by all three women that eventually find the truth, in what is, a tricky case of red herrings, coffee pods, missing sugar bowls, and dodgy developers.

On the cosier side of the crime spectrum, without tipping over into the saccharine end of that scale, this is very much a story of older women getting on with things, living life to their own rules (well sort of in Beck's case), and enjoying a challenge. The case clues are solved with observation, deduction and only the occasional bit of personal jeopardy. The humour is bright, sarcastic and beautifully pitched, evoking older female friendship, the complications of life, shared experience, exasperation and affection all at the same time. The sense of place brings forward that feeling of quintessential English small town / village life, without it tipping to far into so small that a few murders seem to threaten population levels or property values.

It's a nice series, enjoyable without being silly, funny without losing too much of the thrill of the puzzle, or a sense of real danger and jeopardy. The friendship between the three women is expanding, and as a result, more of their backstories are starting to appear. These are women who have lived lives, experienced the good and bad, made decisions that have made them happy and regretful, all of which has given them enough insight into human nature to feel confident of their observation and deduction powers and a need to set wrongs to right.