Steeped in Evil
Laura Childs

Genre:
Mystery
Rating:

In the newest mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of Sweet Tea Revenge, Indigo Tea Shop owner Theodosia Browning is about to learn the true meaning of terroir…

Theodosia Browning has never considered herself a wine connoisseur—tea has always been her forte. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to pass up an invitation to a fancy wine-tasting party at the upscale Knighthall Winery, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina.

But a sweet evening takes on a bitter aftertaste when a dead body is discovered in one of the wine barrels. The son of proprietor Jordan Knight has been murdered.

Dissatisfied with the police investigation, Knight turns to Theo for help. She’s heard through the grapevine that there are both family and business problems at Knighthall. They say in vino veritas, but everyone at the winery seems to be lying through their teeth. Sorting through the guest list as well as family and staff, Theo has her pick of suspects. It may look like the killer has her over a barrel, but cracking tough cases is vintage Theodosia Browning.

Review

For fans of:  Carolyn Hart

Indigo Tea Shop proprietress Theodosia Browning knows way more about chamomile than she does about chardonnay, but that doesn’t stop her from accepting an invitation to an exclusive party at a new vineyard just outside of Charleston. Knighthall Winery’s owners, Jordan and Pandora Knight, are excited to unveil their new Cabernet reserve to the crowd, but when the barrel they select for tasting turns out to contain not wine, but the corpse of Jordan’s son Drew, the festivities take a turn for the funereal.

The police don’t have a clue who murdered Drew or why, so the Knights turn to Theodosia for help. Can she solve the mystery and bring Drew’s killer to justice, or will this be the case that finally puts a cork in her “career” as an amateur sleuth?

Steeped in Evil is book number fifteen in Laura Childs’ Tea Shop Mystery series, and it’s one of the strongest installments to date. Childs’ latest starts with a bang, throwing you straight into the heart of the mystery – and a creative and compelling mystery, it is. The subject matter’s interesting (yay, wine!), there’s no shortage of plausible suspects with legitimate motives, and Childs works in enough twists and turns to keep even the most seasoned mystery fan guessing until the final few chapters. The book’s big chase scene is a bit of a letdown, as its farcical nature stands in stark contrast with the otherwise sophisticated and well-mannered tenor of the tale, but considering how enjoyable I found the rest of the book, that’s a relatively minor quibble.

Childs has an unfortunate tendency to overwrite her books, but (an overabundance of exclamation points and slow winks aside) she shows an uncharacteristic amount of reserve in Steeped in Evil. Her descriptions are still quite elaborate, but rather than detracting from the flow of the story, they help cast Childs’ version of Charleston as a rich and beautiful city full of rich and beautiful people doing rich and beautiful things. And as always, Childs successfully paints the Indigo Tea Shop as the perfect place to pass a lazy afternoon. I wouldn’t call myself a tea-lover, but the way Childs writes about the stuff makes me want to stock my cupboards with nothing but, and the baked goods and other assorted comestibles Haley creates are so decadent and drool-worthy, I swear you could gain weight just by reading about them. The fact that Steeped in Evil features a bonus twenty-five pages or so of recipes, tips, and tea resources is just icing on the cake.

Reviewed by Kat