Customer Reviews

The Jasmine Moon Murder

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Theodosia Browning, owner of the Indigo Tea Shop in the historic downtown district of Charlotte, South Carolina, agrees to cater the "Ghost Crawl" society tour of the Jasmine cemetery sponsored by Charleston's Medical Triad. The host is Dr. Jasper Davis, the uncle of Theodosia's boyfriend Jory. Uncle Jasper and his team developed the Novalaser, a less invasive way of performing angioplasty. All of a sudden Dr. Davis keels over and is dead; Theodosia finds a syringe near the body.

Jory asks his girlfriend to investigate his uncle's death since she has a history of solving homicides. She plunges into the investigation with plenty of enthusiasm and everyone who knows her believe she is on the trail of the killer. When she is out horseback riding, someone tries to shoot her and shortly thereafter somebody throws a rock through her window warning her to stop her inquiries. Theodosia becomes even more determined to find the killer since she doesn't let her fear interfere with keeping her promise to Jory.

The latest Tea Shop Mystery is a delectable and delicious amateur sleuth mystery with mouth watering recipes that are worth the price of the book. The description of tea and the meals that The Indigo Tea Shop serves will make readers salivate. The heroine out does herself in this homicide investigation because she is investigating homicides without empirical evidence. Laura Childs serves up a delightful tea and murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner

This was another winner from Laura Childs. Her characters are so likeable and add so much to her great plots! The tea lore is also fascinating! I can't wait for the next installment of the teashop mysteries!

I have read nearly all of the "Tea Shop Mysteries" and have yet to find the series "predictable". Each new title offers the skills of Theodosia Browning, sleuth/tea shop owner extrordinary and her staff. In addition to a plot that keeps readers guessing until the end, Ms. Childs also takes the opportunity to imerse us in the ambience of historic downtown Charleston and its various historic churches, as well as other landmarks,festivals, and social life.
I very much enjoyed this book, and am already looking forward to Ms Child's next effort in this series.
Sincerely,
Edwin Merwin, Jr.

I love this mystery series and they keep getting better and better. I have often noticed that after about the fourth or fifth book in a mystery series, they often start losing their "punch". That is not the case with this one. In fact, I think this is the best book in the series. The tea info is enlightening, the characters are well-developed and the setting of Charleston intriging. What a gem of a book !!!!

Anyone who enjoys "cozy" myteries should definitely give this series a try .... it doesn't get better than this.

Laura Childs has certainly found a niche with her Tea Shop Mystery series. For fans of both mystery and tea alike can find something to enjoy in these fast-paced easy reads. Yet Childs and her amateur sleuth don't seem to be making many improvements as the series continues down its predictable path.

"The Jasmine Moon Murder", the fifth in the series, finds the amateur detective Theodosia Browning dealing with a murder that hits very close to home - the uncle of her boyfriend, Jory Davis. When Jory's uncle collapses at a local fundraising event, Theodosia finds a synringe on the ground nearby and knows that his death was not accidental. And although Theo promises the now familiar detective Burt Tidwell that she will keep her distance from the crime, she can't help but investigate when Jory asks her for help. And just like always, Theodosia's sleuthing winds up with her getting a little too close to the truth and making herself a target for the killer at large.

The Tea Shop Mystery series is a unique series, and it seems a shame that the recipes and information about tea are almost more entertaining than the mystery at hand. Childs will certainly never win any awards for writing, as she refuses to believe that her audience is as intelligent as she believes her own creation to be. Her writing is strewn with repeated descriptions mere pages apart and similes that land as softly as an atom bomb, (not to mention that this particular edition had an awful lot of typos in it). All in all, taking the bad with the good, these mysteries are a pleasant and thirst-inducing escape from reality.

I like cozy, light hearted little mysteries like this, enjoyed it even though the writing style tends to be naive (for want of a better word) And the tea? 'Way too much tea-this and tea-that.

Conversations between the characters were repetetive. The mystery itself contrived. However, I did find the characters likeable and the food she described kept making me hungry.....(I'm going to try that scone recipe at the end of the book.)I also liked her description of Emily Guthro's house.

So I'm giving it two stars instead of one.

Theodosia is asked to help with catering Charleston's Ghost Crawl, a charity event sponsored by a medical organization and organized by her boyfriend Jory's Uncle Jasper. Everyone is horrified as Jasper dies and a syringe is found nearby. Jory begs her to help find the murderer, but the local police chief asks her not to do any investigating. Trouble seems to follow Theo in the form of an attack while she is riding horses with Jory, and in self-defense she begins her own investigation. She suspects some of Jasper's medical cronies who were working with him on a new apparatus for heart patients, and also his wife who was in the process of divorcing him. Her snooping only succeeds in putting her in a life-threatening position, but her quick thinking saves the day. This is the fifth book in the series and is an enjoyable return to characters who are becoming familiar and beloved by readers.

This book is great, the author is one of the best!! I love her books.I have read many mysteries and this is one of the best.

seriously i love this series the herione and her tea shop and enjoyed every one of these books. they did make me start getting into different kinds of teas as i read them. couldnt recommend them more!

I really enjoy Laura Child's writing style. Enough detail to paint the scene but no overkill. Like the settings. Mysteries are believable and keep you guessing. A quick read and enjoyable. Prefer her tea novels to the scrapbooking novels.