Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Margery is gearing up for her inaugural Christmas as the kitchen manager at Summerview School. Despite the impending hustle and bustle of prepping many mashed potatoes and pies, she finds solace in her dedicated kitchen team and “quirky” wife, Clementine. However, chaos ensues when the kitchen staff and the rest of the Summerview School Staff are coerced into participating in the annual Christmas concert by the Head of Drama, Mrs. Smith, and her lackey music teacher, Mrs. Large.

(Side note: is this a thing in British schools? I went to public school in America and only students participated in school productions.)

There’s a lot of broad slapstick about how Mrs. Smith treats Mrs. Large, how small Mrs. Large is, how Mrs. Smith has broken up with the headmaster. It takes a while to actually get to the rehearsing of the play because there’s always a long interlude of unwieldy exposition antics usually initiated by Clementine. I think they are supposed to be funny. I find it slows the flow of the book considerably.

After much terrible dancing and squabbling between Mrs. Smith and her unwilling dancers, the first rehearsal takes a deadly turn when the stage lights collapse, claiming the life of the music teacher, Mrs. Large.

Mrs. Smith immediately falls under suspicion; due to her loud and numerous squabbles with Mrs. Smith about the school production, she seeks the aid of the Dinner Lady Detectives to clear her name and lift her suspension from work.

The Review

Initially intrigued by the premise of a faculty concert gone horribly awry and leading to murder. I think the premise is genuinely funny. Despite some misgivings from my review of the Dinner Lady detectives, I believe that Margery and Clementine could have been refined from their original form to be quirky, haphazard, but endearing sleuths, and… they were…at times…

However, An Unfortunate Christmas Murder fails to live up to its potential, offering instead a pedestrian holiday mystery featuring a couple whose dynamic feels more like that of bickering sisters than spouses, which is really unfortunate because I want a dynamic, funny, old lady lesbian duo amateur detective story. I just don’t want Hannah Hendy to write it.

One of the major faults of the book is that Clementine is mean and occasionally abusive to Margery. Clementine’s antics are not funny, they are histrionic and manipulative, and unceasing. Margery, on the whole does not want to get involved in sleuthing, it’s always Margery going into every situation with no plan and emotionally manipulating Margery into getting them out of scrapes.

And the scrapes they get into are…so weird. Margery has to climb into the ceiling and find a dead body; Margery crashes her beloved car into a hedge and a pond; Margery is nearly burnt to death because apparently neither one of these ladies can remember to charge their cellphone or use them. This is ridiculous; my 82-year-old grandma and all of her friends text and call like friends. This book treats Margery and Clementine like infants, and we, the reader are supposed to find it funny,

The narrative boasts sporadic moments of actual humor, such as a bizarre subplot about the youngest member of the kitchen staff who has stolen his brother’s identity to get this kitchen job and is patently terrible at it. The levity fails to permeate the entire story. The cozy charm one expects from such a tale is noticeably absent, leaving the narrative feeling incomplete, especially since there’s much to do about how much Clementine loves Christmas, and that thread never really pays off.

Despite the initial promise of an engaging mystery, the plot falters, progressing sluggishly and lacking coherence. The way that Clementine and Margery are brought into the story feels flimsy and the pretext that Mrs. Smith really fears that she would be arrester feels even flimsier. However, I my credulity is stressed to the breaking point, when Mrs. Smith, poised, coiffed, immaculate, Mrs. Smith would deign to ask Margery and Clementine for help-who she openly disdains instead of, hiring a swanky lawyer.

Despite the kitchen workers being painted with a broad brush in the first book, I think they were filled in better in An Unfortunate Christmas Murder. Think, however, they were underused, and I wish Margery had been able to command them into battle on this investigation. Still, Clementine’s showboating undermined any points where they might have come into the story naturally.

The mystery could not hang its hat on its character or plot, with the introduction of red herrings failing to add any substantial intrigue. An Unfortunate Christmas Murder feels rudderless. The resolution falls flat, with weak and unconvincing motives contributing to the overall lack of suspense, besides one scene where everyone nearly burns to death in the school auditorium.

An Unfortunate Christmas Murder offers a mediocre holiday read with unlikable characters and a festive setting. However, its lackluster mystery and underdeveloped relationships leave much to be desired. I have finished the two books of this series that I own and probably won’t return for any further adventures.

Read my review of The Dinner Lady Detectives here.