Bad Housekeeping

April 17, 2017
This witty series launch from Chance (Teetotaled) introduces 28-year-old graduate student and stress eater Agnes Blythe, of Naneda, N.Y., and her great-aunt Euphemia “Effie” Winters. Effie is back in town after inheriting the crumbling Stagecoach Inn from her cousin. The place is a dump, but globe-hopping 70-something ex-model Effie is determined to rehab the inn into an elegant getaway. She’s eager to enlist Agnes’s help, but her great-niece has other things on her mind: she has just been dumped by her professor fiancé, Roger Hollins, for a Pilates instructor. Still, Agnes has little recourse but to throw her lot in with Effie after they discover the body of the despicable Kathleen Todd in the inn, strangled to death the day after Agnes threatened to wring her neck. As prime suspects one and two, Agnes and Effie pursue a killer with the help of the high school crush who once broke Agnes’s heart, the delicious Otis Hatch. Readers will look forward to spending more time with Agnes and Effie. Agent: Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management.

April 1, 2017
Dumped and depressed, a young woman must team up with her troublemaking great-aunt to solve a crime.Agnes Blythe is anything but excited to learn that her Great-Aunt Effie has come to her small-town home of Naneda, New York. Effie has a way of finding the worst in people, and Agnes can't help but remember the awkward moment when Effie described the teenage Agnes as beautiful for a husky girl. So of course Effie arrives just as Agnes is at her most vulnerable, having just been ditched by her professor boyfriend Roger for not being exciting enough. When Agnes hears that her aunt's inherited the Stagecoach Inn and hopes to renovate the condemned building, she's relieved that Effie will have a distraction and may forget that Agnes lost her job at the local library. In the hope of raising some money, and maybe recapturing some of her self-esteem, Agnes stops by her old job to see if there's any chance of her being hired back permanently. Not only is she turned down, but she has a run-in with grouchy old biddy Kathleen Todd. When Kathleen accuses Agnes of breaking a library artifact on purpose and promises to have her arrested, Agnes loses control and threatens to wring Kathleen's neck. Though the threat isn't meant to have weight, Kathleen is found duly strangled the next day, vaulting Agnes to the top of the suspect list. Forced to search for exculpatory evidence, Agnes must join forces with Effie, who's also a suspect in Kathleen's murder. Can the two clear each other's names, or will they be each other's undoing? Chance once again battles the balance between wit and overkill (Teetotaled, 2016, etc.), unfortunately erring on the side of the latter.

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Starred review from May 1, 2017

When Agnes Blythe's professor boyfriend dumps her, and she burns her bridges at her part-time library job by insulting Kathleen Todd, the chair of the historical society, her only option left is to help her great-aunt Effie salvage the condemned Stagecoach Inn. They only have one week to bring the electric up to code. Why the tight deadline? Kathleen had pushed for it. When Agnes and Effie find Kathleen dead at the inn, rumors fly that they killed her. However, Agnes is shrewd enough to realize the killer may have started the rumor. Aunt and niece dodge the cops in a stolen car, and their investigation uncovers lies and crimes. As bodies pile up, the unlikely sleuthing team's list of suspects narrows. Agnes and Effie are the most inept amateur sleuths since Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum and Lula. VERDICT Chance (Teetotaled) kicks off a humorous cozy series marked by mesmerizing characters and laugh aloud high jinks, making this a fun romp.--LH

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2017
Agnes Blythe, back in her hometown of Naneda, New York, is, in short order dumped by her fiance for a Pilates instructor, kicked out of the apartment they were to share, and forced to move back in with her father. With no employment offers on the horizon, Agnes agrees to help her Great-Aunt Effie, an eccentric former model, renovate a condemned inn before it is torn down. When local resident Kathleen Todd, the woman pushing the demolition, is found dead at the inn, both Agnes and Effie are considered suspects in the murder. To clear themselves, the two investigate numerous suspects while tooling around in Effie's stolen Cadillac. Quirky characters and plenty of humor distinguish this entertaining cozy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)