Book Review: Murder At Mallowan Hall by Colleen Cambridge

 GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Tucked away among Devon's rolling green hills, Mallowan Hall combines the best of English tradition with the modern conveniences of 1930. Housekeeper Phyllida Bright, as efficient as she is personable, manages the large household with an iron fist in her very elegant glove. In one respect, however, Mallowan Hall stands far apart from other picturesque country houses...

The manor is home to archaeologist Max Mallowan and his famous wife, Agatha Christie. Phyllida is both loyal to and protective of the crime writer, who is as much friend as employer. An aficionado of detective fiction, Phyllida has yet to find a gentleman in real life half as fascinating as Mrs. Agatha's Belgian hero, Hercule Poirot. But though accustomed to murder and its methods as frequent topics of conversation, Phyllida is unprepared for the sight of a very real, very dead body on the library floor...

A former Army nurse, Phyllida reacts with practical common sense--and a great deal of curiosity. It soon becomes clear that the victim arrived at Mallowan Hall under false pretenses during a weekend party. Now, Phyllida not only has a houseful of demanding guests on her hands--along with a distracted, anxious staff--but hordes of reporters camping outside. When another dead body is discovered--this time, one of her housemaids--Phyllida decides to follow in M. Poirot's footsteps to determine which of the Mallowans' guests is the killer. With help from the village's handsome physician, Dr. Bhatt, Mr. Dobble, the butler, along with other household staff, Phyllida assembles the clues. Yet, she is all too aware that the killer must still be close at hand and poised to strike again. And only Phyllida's wits will prevent her own story from coming to an abrupt end...

TEE'S THOUGHTS:

Imagine working for the famous mystery writer Agatha Christie in her manor house where she lives with her second husband Max Mallowan. Then imagine walking into the library one morning to draw back the curtains only to find a dead body. That is exactly what happens to Phyllida Bright, Agatha’s head of housekeeping in this delightful very British cozy mystery.

As an Agatha Christie fan, I absolutely adored this book, sure it wasn’t perfect, but to imagine an actual murder in the Queen of murder mysteries library is hysterical, almost tongue in cheek. 

There was a large number of servants in the home and several house guests spending the night when the murder happened. Because of the large number of secondary characters, there were times when it was difficult to keep up with them all, but I enjoyed that the story was told mostly from the “ downstairs “ bunch instead of the guest that lived “ upstairs “.

I did enjoy Phyllida, she was what you would expect from the head of housekeeping and a long-time acquaintance of Ms. Chrisies, a bit cold, a bit above the rest of the staff, precise, capable and confident. I think making her extremely friendly would have taken away from her personality. She admired her employer's greatest detective Hercule Poirot, and she took cues from what she knew or thought she knew he would do to solve a crime.

My complaints with the book? There were a few. The choice of murder weapons was a bit of a long shot, and the reveal at the end was as absurd as the weapon of choice. 

The story was entertaining, the writing was easy to read, and this book had everything in it that you would expect from a good British mystery…..murder in a big manor house, noisy servants and of course Agatha Christie…even though in this story she was a secondary character and not the writer.