Death Comes to Marlow

Thorogood follows up 2021’s The Marlow Murder Club with another brisk and breezy cozy featuring 78-year-old Judith Potts, who creates crosswords for national newspapers, and her friends Suzie and Becks. Judith is surprised when Sir Peter Bailey—the head of one of the town’s most preeminent families—asks her to attend a garden party at his home the day before his wedding to his live-in nurse. There, the champagne-sipping guests suddenly hear a tremendous crash and, rushing into the house, find Sir Peter crushed beneath a fallen bookcase. As the only key to the room is in the dead man’s pocket, the police are quick to assume the death was accidental. Judith does not agree. But how will she and her friends prove that someone had committed murder inside a locked room? With quiet help from a police sergeant and their own wits, the women start parsing clues to home in on the killer. Thorogood’s characters are vivid and companionable, the dialogue sparkles with wit, and the plot gives armchair detectives a fighting chance to solve the mystery. This is good, fast-moving fun. Agent: Ginger Clark, Ginger Clark Literary. (June)