Genre: Mystery
Rating:

The kitchen staff of the Pennyfoot Hotel is toiling away to prepare the finest meal for the guests on Christmas. And the plum pudding may very well be to die for…

Cecily Sinclair Baxter could use a Christmas miracle. Mrs. Chubb, the Pennyfoot’s housekeeper, must travel up north for a family emergency, and Cecily needs a temporary replacement. The agency doesn’t have much to offer on short notice during this busy time of year. But they have someone—Beatrice Tucker—who turns out to be more of a curse. She fights with just about everyone, including Archibald Armitage.

Star of the London stage, Armitage is staying at the Pennyfoot this holiday season. His presence turns out to be a blessing after he rescues the stable manager’s dog from drowning in the icy duck pond. But not everyone in Badgers End is a fan of the actor…

When Armitage drops dead after Beatrice serves him some plum pudding, everyone assumes the huffy housekeeper is the culprit. But as Cecily begins to investigate, the list of suspects grows, and solving this case may not be as easy as pie…or pudding.

Series: A Special Pennyfoot Hotel Myst

Review

For fans of:  Ann Purser, Anne Perry

Christmas has returned to the Pennyfoot Country Club, and once again, manager Cecily Sinclair Baxter is hoping and praying the Christmas curse will pass them by.  That this year, no tragedy will occur, and the club will be filled with happiness and holiday cheer from the start of the season until the finish. 

Then, however, famous London stage actor Archibald Armitage is found dead in his room, the apparent victim of arsenic poisoning, and Cecily finds herself smack in the middle of a yet another murder investigation. Ideally, she’s like to solve the crime before the guests are the wiser – which in her experience means doing so with as little police involvement as possible. Unfortunately, though, it seems that for all his fame, Armitage had more enemies than friends, which makes for a rather lengthy list of suspects. Can Cecily catch the killer in time to save Christmas at the Pennyfoot, or will the curse succeed in cooling their Yule?

The Clue is in the Pudding is Kate Kingsbury’s eighth Holiday Pennyfoot Hotel Mystery, and it’s a pure delight from start to finish. I’m not really one for historical mysteries (this series is set in Edwardian England), nor do I tend to like books that are holiday-themed (I often find them sappier than a freshly cut conifer), but catching up with Cecily and friends and reading about their Christmas traditions has become one of my own. I look forward to Phoebe’s disastrous pageants; and to the Colonel’s loud, rambling, crazy, inappropriate, off-topic stories; and to Madeline’s weird costumes and eerily accurate psychic trances.  And what’s more, I look forward to the spectacle that is Christmas at the Pennyfoot. In the words of Pennyfoot employee Pansy Watson:

“This was her favorite time of year.  This was when the Pennyfoot Country Club looked its best, with the glowing Christmas trees in the lobby and the library, bright garlands of red and green ribbons adorning the stairs, and enormous wreaths of holly and mistletoe clinging to the walls.

From the boudoirs on the top floor to the narrow hallways below stairs, the fragrance of sweet spices from the kitchen and fresh pine from the woods filled the air.  The smell of Christmas.  It was everywhere, and how she loved it.”

But The Clue is in the Pudding is more than just a love-letter to the season; it’s also a cracking good mystery.  The plot is intricate, the narrative drive is strong, and the pace can only be described as breakneck; I unintentionally read the book from cover to cover in a single sitting. Yes, it’s funny and it’s sweet and it’s even kind of sentimental, but it’s also got thrills and intrigue aplenty, and more clever clues, shifty suspects, and craftily deployed red herrings than you can shake a pine bough at.

Kingsbury’s cast is fabulous; it’s large, but not too, and is populated entirely with entertaining and fully fleshed characters.  Cecily is a perfect series heroine; she’s good and kind, yet she’s also intelligent and headstrong, and she manages her unruly staff, her curmudgeonly husband, her zany friends, and the bumbling local police with grace and aplomb. Maids Pansy and Gertie simultaneously provide humor and heart, and their evolving romantic entanglements with driver-slash-stable manager Samuel and caretaker Clive add depth to the books and a nice continuity to the series that makes you want to keep coming back for more. And the chief antagonist in this particular tale, temporary housekeeper Beatrice Tucker (a.k.a. “Tucker the Terrible”), is so odious a woman you’ll be rooting for her arrest and/or her demise from the moment she walks through the door.

Equal parts Upstairs, Downstairs and Gosford Park with a healthy helping of Agatha Christie thrown in for good measure, Kate Kingsbury’s The Clue is in the Pudding is just the thing to help you recover from your Christmas shopping.  It’ll boost your spirits, challenge your mind, nourish your soul, and remind you of all that’s good about the holiday season.

Reviewed by Kat

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