Welcome to Murder Week
A Novel
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- ¥1,900
発行者による作品情報
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
In this delightfully funny and heartfelt new novel from the author of the “bittersweet page-turner” (The New York Times) The Last Book Party, an American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town.
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
Witty, wise, and deliciously escapist, Welcome to Murder Week is a fresh, inventive twist on the murder mystery and a touching portrayal of one daughter’s reckoning with her grief, her past—and her own budding sense of adventure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An unexpected ticket for a "murder week" in England's Peak District upends the quiet routine of optician Cath Little in this sturdy reworking of classic British country house mysteries from Dukes (The Last Book Party). When Cath's estranged mother dies, the Buffalo, N.Y., native discovers that she had purchased tickets to a weeklong British murder mystery party. Unable to cancel the trip, Cath decides to go. At the event she teams up with Wyatt Green, who's at a crossroads in his marriage, and Amity Clark, a divorced romance writer struggling with writer's block, to try and win the contest. In the process, she unearths previously unknown details about her mother's past, and falls for sexy bartender Dev Sharma, who's staffing the party. Mystery-first readers are likely to find the faux whodunit at the center of the plot perfunctory, and the revelations about Cath's mother lack punch. Still, the breezy atmosphere and Dukes's deep knowledge of mystery tropes generate a certain amount of fun. It's a solid if unspectacular pastiche.
