A Small Hill to Die On

August 20, 2012
In Duncan's solid if unsurprising fourth cozy featuring nail salon owner Penny Brannigan (after 2011's A Killer's Christmas in Wales), Mai Grimstead, the owner of Nailz, a chain of nail bars and tanning salons, has just moved to Llanelen, Wales. Mai courteously stops by Penny's shop to inform her that she will soon have competition. But Nailz's new branch draws few customers, so why is its cash-deposit bag, which Penny spots one day at the bank, so much larger than her own? Meanwhile, Mai's children are unhappy in their new home, and one of these, her 19-year-old daughter, is displaying signs of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When Penny stumbles on a corpse during a walk and realizes that the female victim was a customer, she once again turns sleuth, though her detective work does little to distinguish her from countless other curious, well-intentioned amateurs. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary.

A quaint mystery set in a Welsh village filled with quirky residents should offer a narrator a great opportunity to shine. However, Anne Flosnik's narration doesn't bring this story and its characters to life. Penny Brannigan, a Canadian emigrée who is part owner of a hair and nail salon, discovers the body of a teen she recently manicured and gets involved in the murder investigation. A Canadian-Welsh accent makes for confusing listening, while the other characters' accents are just odd enough to be distracting. Characters are difficult to distinguish from one another, making conversations hard to follow. Scenes that should be suspenseful--such as the one in which the murderer is revealed--simply fall flat due to narration that sounds forced. M.M.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine