This book has all the hallmarks of a cozy mystery: set in a small town in England, with thatched rooves and a manor, lots of personality suspects including bikers, an aristocrat and his high-and-mighty wife and a middle-eastern wife with a secret, two cute kids, and a sweet old lady neighbor who is somewhat psychic and raises cats.

The victim is another sweet old lady, a nanny, trained in nursing, who has cared for many of the local children at one time or another. She’s not sweet all the time though: she is fussy in shops, giving the owners a hard time, and then caring for their children so diligently during illness that the parents forgive her; she picks fights with local toughs about parking; she isn’t above reporting one of the small children who idolize her for shoplifting and stealing. And yet that same child adores her, sneaking into her house through the cat door to be near her when Nanny’s sick.

One of her charges, an aristocrat with a drug problem, whilst sober one day, adored her so much that he changes his will to leave her a fortune; he’d leave her his entire estate if it wasn’t entailed to his younger brother. But then again, the aristocrat was always Nanny’s favorite. And then he died, soon after, and Nanny found herself with more money than she knew what to do with.

The manor turns out to be inhabited by a rock star, his entourage, and his young son who discovered Nanny’s body – but what was Nanny doing so far out in the woods? Even if she went on walkabout after getting concussion from falling and hitting her head, she was too frail to make it so far. And why does her neice want to insist it isn’t murder…

Technically, however, this could not be considered a “cozy” mystery because the detective is a cop, not an amateur. But even he, while examining forensic evidence at the cop shop, is still cozy. His daughter is recovering from the car accident that killed his wife and infant, nursing an injured leg back to health, and suffering from PTSD that causes conflict at her school. We learn all about his sergeant’s family, his mother who lives in, their two small children with a third announced to be on the way about midway through the book, and their too-small apartment, all they can afford on their cop’s salary. So cozy!

This is a fun book to read, the ending clever. The series continues after this and, unfortunately, Nanny’s death was just the start for this small town which experiences violence at quite an unusual rate. Unusual for a new writer, Stacey’s second book is as good as the first and her work continues to grow.

As I was writing this, I realized I had written about Susannah Stacey before¹ – in 2020. Here’s what I said in that post, called “Stuck” which is about getting un-stuck:

My bedside reading right now is a series of mysteries by Susannah Stacey. The interesting thing about these mysteries is that the murderers often have the same “tell.” (Mystery writers do this: for Tony Hillerman, it’s the insensitive white person.) Stacey’s murderers feel trapped (and often are) by life and don’t know how to get out. The valley looks too steep and it’s dangerous down there, something is threatening them. And they lash out. But instead of solving their problem, of suddenly lifting them out of the valley, they find that they have sunk even deeper. Things have grown darker, more oppressive. (Stacey’s detective, on the other hand, has come through his valley and is looking forward; it’s a nice contrast.)

That was probably the last time I had read this series until now – and I was clearly towards the end of it when I wrote that. The “tell” is not so obvious in the first few books as it is in the later books.

I still recommend these. Unfortunately you’ll have to try to find these used. They don’t seem to have made it to e- and are no longer in print in the states. I wonder why that is – that some authors, who aren’t as good as this one, make it to e- and others don’t.

A true mystery.

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1. My greatest fear, as am I am now writing about book #216 this year, is that I am writing about a book I’ve already written about this year. ↩︎