Cyanide with Christie

February 1, 2019
Hyde's third entry in her Crime with the Classics series (after Arsenic with Austen, 2016, and Bloodstains with Bront�, 2017) this time pays homage to Agatha Christie. Widow Emily Cavanaugh, on sabbatical from teaching literature at Reed College, is hosting her first Windy Corner Writers' Retreat before Christmas in the Victorian mansion she inherited from her great aunt Beatrice in a small Oregon coastal town. But her six guests include two clunkers: rude memoirist Dustin Weaver and a gate-crashing writer of lurid paperbacks pen-named Cruella Crime, who has harmed two of the other guests and is blackmailing another. Winter storms leave roads too icy for travel, so the group is isolated when Cruella is found dying from cyanide put in a bottle of amaretto given to Emily as a gift. Sheriff Luke Richards, who has repeatedly proposed to Emily, struggles to overcome his jealousy of her instant warm friendship with guest Oscar Lansing when there's another murder attempt. So a confrontation is arranged, with Luke taking the Hercule Poirot role, to lay out the crimes and name the killer. Another winning cozy, with love finally prevailing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)