Review: The Poison Pen Murders
A question that comes up when potentially choosing a book that's not the first book in a series is will I be able to follow along or will I be lost? For me, the author who was the best at this was Sue Grafton. In just a paragraph or so, she would let the reader know who Kinsey Millhone was and what was currently going in her life. Dee MacDonald's book The Poison Pen Murders is the fifth in the Ally McKinley Mystery series and I decided to put it to the Grafton test.
Ally McKinley is a retiree who gave up her city life to run a bed-and-breakfast in the tiny village of Locharran in the Scottish Highlands. She has already made a reputation for herself as an amateur detective solving several murders. The book quickly kicks off with Ally getting a phone call from her friend Desdemona about a threatening letter that another resident of the village got in the mail. When the two of them go to visit the woman who received the letter, they find her floating in an overflowing bathtub. In just a few days, there are more threatening notes and more women of a certain age are discovered dead.
The Scottish Highlands setting is described beautifully throughout the book. The spring time frame calls for an ever changing landscape and the book is full of early blooming flowers and leaves beginning to show.
Dee MacDonald is a skilled writer who subtly weaves information from Ally’s past crime solving adventures into this story. Her son and daughter-in-law are visiting which brings up opportunities to update them on both the state of the bed and breakfast and past murders. Visits from Amir Kandahar, the local detective inspector, also refer back to crimes covered in previous books. All done smoothly and without seeming forced.
So, yes, The Poison Pen Murders passes the Grafton test handily and just a great read in general. I will definitely be adding books 1-5 in the Ally McKinley Mystery series to my TBS stack.
5 lattes out of 5
Disclaimer: This eARC was provided by Bookouture via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
