Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (Paperback)

by G.M. Malliet (Author)
Key Phrases: Sir Adrian, Sergeant Fear, Waverley Court (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I'm definitely a fan an eager for the next in the series. Keep them coming, Gin!" -- Julie Obermiller for Mysterical-E

"In the beginning, Death of a Cozy Writer will entertain readers with its characters, setting, and board game-like features, but in the end will captivate them with a compelling denouement in a familiar gathering of the suspects in the drawing room." --Mysterious Reviews, Oct. 6, 2008

"[T]his novel delivers exactly what you hoped it would: a new packaging of the old formula, and a very enjoyable read." --Gumshoe Review, October 2008

Chosen by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book of 2008. --Kirkus Reviews, Dec. 15, 2008

"Death of a Cozy Writer is a book anyone who cut their teeth on Agatha Christie's mysteries will treasure. I read it once for the story, and plan to read it a second time just to savor the language. It's that good." -- Cozy Library

"A good old fashion whodunit that Agatha Christie would have been pleased to claim as her own." -- Alibi Books

"A house party in a Cambridgeshire mansion with the usual suspects, er, guests -- a sly patriarch, grasping relatives, a butler, and a victim named Ruthven (what else?) -- I haven't had so much fun since Anderson's 'Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy.' Pass the tea and scones, break out sherry, settle down in the library by the fire and enjoy Malliet's delightful tribute to the time-honored tradition of the English country house mystery." -- Marcia Talley, Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of Dead Man Dancing

"Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and Detective Sergeant Fear of the Cambridgeshire constabulary conduct a lively investigation that underscores how the lack and the love of money might be at the root of society's ills." -- Publishers Weekly, May 19, 2008

"G.M. Malliet's Death of a Cozy Writer is a delightful homage to the great novels of Britian's Golden Age of Mysteries." -- Nancy Pearl, KUOW 94.9 FM

"Malliet's skillful debut demonstrates the sophistication one would expect of a much more established writer. I'm looking forward to her next genre-bender, Death and the Lit Chick." -- Mystery Scene Magazine

"The mystery was complex and satisfying, with several unpredictable twists, and St. Just and Fear are likeable but funny investigators." --"On My Bookshelf" Blog, Sept. 16, 2008

"The traditional British cozy is alive and well. Delicious. I was hooked from the first paragraph." -- Rhys Bowen, award-winning author of Her Royal Spyness

"Try Ms. Malliet's prize-winning debut for a classic cozy set in modern times." -- Fresh Fiction, Aug. 26, 2008

Death of a Cozy Writer won the 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, was short-listed for the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, and has been named a semi-finalist for the IPPY awards in the category of Mystery/Suspense/Thriller. --May 2, 2009

Malliet's debut combines devices from Christie and Clue to keep you guessing until the dramatic denouement. -- Kirkus Reviews

Product Description
From deep in the heart of his eighteenth century English manor, millionaire Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk writes mystery novels and torments his four spoiled children with threats of disinheritance. Tiring of this device, the portly patriarch decides to weave a malicious twist into his well-worn plot. Gathering them all together for a family dinner, he announces his latest blow – a secret elopement with the beautiful Violet... who was once suspected of murdering her husband.

Within hours, eldest son and appointed heir Ruthven is found cleaved to death by a medieval mace. Since Ruthven is generally hated, no one seems too surprised or upset – least of all his cold-blooded wife Lillian. When Detective Chief Inspector St. Just is brought in to investigate, he meets with a deadly calm that goes beyond the usual English reserve. And soon Sir Adrian himself is found slumped over his writing desk – an ornate knife thrust into his heart. Trapped amid leering gargoyles and stone walls, every member of the family is a likely suspect. Using a little Cornish brusqueness and brawn, can St. Just find the killer before the next-in-line to the family fortune ends up dead?

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: MIDNIGHT INK (July 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738712485
• ISBN-13: 978-0738712482
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,324 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superlative Debut Mystery Series, July 14, 2008

By	mostserene1 (USA) - See all my reviews

Let us begin this review with a blunt declaration: G.M. Malliet can WRITE. And, more vitally, she can tell a story.

The plot of Death of a Cozy Writer revolves around a wealthy, aging aristocrat's will, a storyline harkening back to Kyd's Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's King Lear. Ms. Malliet's novel's central conceit is a British detective procedural that gently skewers the Cozy mystery sub-genre within an English country house setting. Familiar ground, brilliantly re-traversed. Moreover, Malliet manages to honor the sacred concord between mystery writer and reader by faithfully observing the requisite genre conventions, but in her own quirky, tongue-in-chic style.

The author uses the early chapters to depict the various characters with wit and unusual insight. She then deposits them at the nimbly executed meal en famille, a model of nuanced familial interaction and serial revelation. Once the estimable DCI St. Just and obligatory sidekick are introduced into the mix, the pace quickens and the reader is catapulted into a dizzying vortex of misdirection, surprise, and, echoing Greek tragedies, recognition and reversal. So sure, so authoritative is Malliet's grasp of character, plot, and convention as she propels the intricate plot to conclusion, I felt I had witnessed a display of narrative virtuosity equal to that of any first rate mystery writer's very best work.

Appetite whetted, I avidly await the gifted G.M. Malliet's next literary outing. Perhaps she will even include a "Death of an Amazon Reviewer" book in this promising series. Hmmm, I better hide the cutlery......

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most excellent first mystery!, July 12, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

G.M. Malliet is a professional journalist and copywriter with degrees from Oxford and

Cambridge Universities. DEATH OF A COPYWRITER is her first mystery and has already garnered the Malice Domestic Grant and the Romance Writers of America 2006 Stiletto Award in the thriller category.

Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is as phony as his title. He has also produced one of the truly great dysfunctional families. He is ensconced in his eighteenth-century Cambridgeshire manor, and has married a woman who was accused of murdering her first husband for his money. He delights in using Violet to torment his grown-up children, all of whom have their own foibles. The result naturally turns to murder, and it is up to Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Fear, from the Cambridgeshire Constabulary to sort out the mess. The servants also have their own secrets to cover up, and the result is a jolly investigation marked by hilarious dialogue and commentary:

"The poor bugger really was dead, and he'd been dead awhile. St. Just thought it was little wonder the man who said he was his brother was in such sad shape. The body in the wine refrigerator or whatever it was called was a mess, the skull thoroughly crushed in. The face, itself, however, was intact: In profile, it retained the aristocratic, pampered visage of what the coroner would undoubtedly describe was a well-nourished, middle-aged man."

Malliet writes this little "cozy" with a sense of humor and an eye towards thoroughly confusing the reader. The connections made by St. Just are nothing short of Sherlock Holmes at his most coherent.

Malliet is not unaware of the perils of alcoholism to the family unit, and she uses this as a vehicle to produce the family secrets that would otherwise emerge as far-fetched. But in Ms. Malliet's able writing, it all makes a sordid type of sense. The result is a page-turner that is both entertaining and exhilarating. A most excellent first mystery!

Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful British drawing room mystery, August 20, 2008

By	Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

G.M. Malliet's Death of a Cozy Writer is a good old-fashioned British drawing room mystery. The ill-fated writer of the book's title is Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk, whose best-selling series of Miss Rampling mysteries has left him rolling in pounds. Sir Adrian's favorite sport is altering his will, disinheriting one or another of his four children in response to real or perceived slights, or for exhibiting questionable taste, among innumerable other possible offenses--torturing them by playing a sort of Russian roulette with their inheritances. Eager to see them all squirm simultaneously and in close quarters, he invites his brood to Waverly Court, Adrian's 18th-century estate in Cambridgeshire, to celebrate his impending nuptials to a woman all four assume will be a British version of Anna Nicole Smith. The invitations prompt the expected amount of shock and complaint. The get-together itself proves to be murderous.

Death of a Cozy Writer is the first in a new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and Sergeant Fear. The crime-fighting pair are not introduced, however, until we are some one hundred pages into the book, after a crime has been committed. And when St. Just and Fear do appear we are not told that much about them. Some details emerge: Fear has a daughter; St. Just has a cat aptly named Deerstalker. But while the other characters in the book are described in great detail--the malevolent Sir Adrian and his scheming brood, the help at Waverly Court--the detectives themselves are not fleshed out. This seems odd, as it is St. Just and his right-hand man who will have to anchor the series as its recurring characters, long after the Beauclerk-Fisks have been left on their own to run through their inheritances. It is interesting that the author has elected to breathe life into characters who will (presumably) be replaced in subsequent outings rather than beefing up her portrayal of St. Just.

Malliet's writing is lovely:

"Natasha admired the woman's self-possession. It was an excellent impersonation of aristocracy putting the revolting masses back in their place. Natasha, who had done her own research, found the act nearly pitch-perfect--for an act it was, she was certain. She wouldn't have put it past Lillian to have arrived at breakfast dressed in jodhpurs, cracking a whip against her highly polished boots, despite the absence of a stables for forty miles or more. Instead, Lillian had opted for the simple wool sheath bedecked with a king's ransom in pearls at neck and wrist: the uniform of the bored society matron. But not, Natasha recognized, quite the done thing for breakfast in a country manor house."

And the mystery certainly kept me guessing until all was revealed in the requisite drawing room scene at the book's end. (I am left confused about one issue I should have liked tied up, though, having to do with the identity of Sir Adrian's secretary.) All in all a delightful read. I look forward to more in the St. Just series.

-- Debra Hamel