Death By Darjeeling by Laura Childs

Theodosia Browning used to be an advertising exec, but she gave up the rat race & bought the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston, SC. She runs it with the help of two employees, Drayton, an older man who is the shop’s resident tea expert, and Haley, a college student who does the baking for the shop. Haley’s friend Bethany occasionally helps out when they’re especially busy.

The shop hosts the refreshments for the neighborhood's annual charity event, the Lamplighter Tour. As the evening is winding down, much-hated local developer Hughes Barron is found dead with a tea cup in front of him and the evidence suggests that he was poisoned. Theo takes a dislike to the Detective in charge of the case and when Bethany seems to be on the suspect list Theo decides to investigate on her own. She soon has a list of suspects, but very little hard evidence. Then strange things begin to happen and it seems that Theo may be next on the killer’s hit list.


I have read and enjoyed my share of cozy mysteries involving sleuths whose day jobs have nothing whatsoever to do with solving crimes and I realize that they require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Even so, I think that in order to work there needs to be a plausible reason why the main character ends up investigating a murder. In this case I didn’t see any good reason for Theo to get involved.

Theo does feel protective of Bethany, but she wasn’t singled out for investigation. It certainly didn’t seem that the Detective was going to railroad her into to prison or anything. In fact, aside from Theo’s dislike of his manners there was nothing obviously incompetent about Detective Tidwell, so I saw no reason for her to believe he wouldn’t solve the case without her interference. There's talk about people staying away from the tea shop because of the poisoning, but that made no sense to me and felt as if was thrown in simply to manufacturing a reason for Theo to take matters into her won hands.

I also had issues with the resolution of the case. The identity of the killer felt like it was pulled out of thin air. Person X did it only because, based on the information presented, you had no reason to suspect Person X . I did like that Theo didn’t actually figure it out. Instead her cluelessness causes the killer to make a mistake and get caught. Given Theo’s lack of any investigative experience and generally random approach to the process it made sense that she never got things quite right.

Of course, Detective Tidwell didn’t look at it that way. After the killer has been arrested he assures Theo that it was her good work cracked the case. Because the cops always appreciate amateur sleuths and give them words of encouragement so that they’ll continue to investigate with no authorization in case a future mystery pops up. I rolled my eyes, but basically waved it off as a set up for their interaction in future books. Tidwell’s praise fits in with Theo’s generally level of popularity though. All the men seem to love her. She meets several men in the course of the investigation and ends up stalked by one and dating another.

Not that Theo is perfect. Childs describes her by saying that she’s not fat, but neither is she thin. She’s a size 10, after the holidays she's sometimes even a 12. Can you imagine? [/sarcasm] I’m in favor of authors writing characters who don’t look like super models, but I think it’s generally best to avoid mentioning a specific size or weight. All that does is make some percentage of the audience want to smack some sense into the writer and that’s not good.

In addition to the character and plot issues I had three general complaints about the writing. The first was the tendency to refer to many of the characters, including the victim, by both their first and last name every single time they were mentioned in either dialogue or description. I know that using both names for people you don’t know well is a bit of a Southernism, but it felt overdone and was annoying. The 2nd problem was that, even for the somewhat formal South, some of the dialogue felt very stilted. The 3rd problem was the odd head hopping. The overwhelming majority of the book is told in the 3rd person, limited to Theo’s POV. However, every now & then there was a paragraph or two from another character’s POV. It was both odd and annoying.

On the plus side, the book does a nice job evoking Charleston and the surrounding Low Country. It’s been many years since I was there last and this book served as a nice substitute for a visit. I also liked the facts about tea sprinkled throughout the book. It wasn't too heavy handed and since I love tea, I found the information interesting. Unfortunately neither of those positives countered the negatives.

Grade: C-

Will I read the next book in the series?: Probably not. In order to enjoy a cozy mystery series I have to really like the main character and I just didn’t warm to Theo. I didn’t hate it though and the library does have all the books, so if I get desperate for reading material at some point in the future I might give Gunpowder Green a try.




Where Are You Reading Challenge: South Carolina