As Easy as Murder: A Primavera Blackstone Mystery

A few laugh-out-loud lines lift Jardine’s otherwise plodding third mystery featuring Primavera Blackstone (after 2010’s Blood Red). Now the ex-honorary consul for Scotland in the idyllic Catalan village of St. Martí d’Empuriès, Blackstone has decided that rearing her 10-year-old son, Tom, should be her sole focus. Then two events disturb the placid routine of their quiet lives—the arrivals in St. Martí of her nephew-by-marriage, Jonathan Sinclair, in town for a golf tournament, and of Patterson Cowling, a retired civil servant from the British Foreign Office who might be more than he seems. Bodies with unrecognizable faces start piling up, but, as usual, the lead’s largely self-centered personality overshadows the crime solving. Readers unfamiliar with Blackstone’s active libido may be shocked by her failure to observe appropriate social boundaries. Agent: Carole Blake, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. (June)