Date with Malice: A Samson and Delilah Mystery

Set in the Yorkshire Dales, Chapman’s well-paced sequel to 2017’s Date with Death finds Samson O’Brien, a London policeman suspended from the National Crime Agency, struggling in his new career as a private detective. The two cases he has aren’t inspiring. Elderly Alice Shepherd, who resides at Fellside Court, a local retirement complex, asks Samson to prove her claim that someone is trying to kill her. Irascible farmer Clive Knowles wants him to locate his missing prize-winning ram. Alice’s subsequent collapse in her apartment is but the first of several unsettling incidents at Fellside Court, and Samson comes to suspect that Knowles is pulling the wool over his eyes. Meanwhile, Samson’s landlady, Delilah Metcalfe, who develops websites and runs a dating service, worms her way into both investigations. Sparks fly as the two friends pursue their separate, if often overlapping, lines of inquiry. Chapman doesn’t sustain the Yorkshire dialect after the first chapter or two, but she vividly describes Yorkshire in winter. Cozy fans looking for good, clean fun will be satisfied. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Apr.)