Review - Bell, Book & Scandal; Jill Churchill

Bell, Book and Scandal

Jill Churchill

Fiction; Mystery (cozy; series – Jane Jeffry #14)

Needed some light reading over Thanksgiving weekend. It had been a while since I’d read one of the Jane Jeffry ‘cozy’ mysteries, but I remembered liking the few I’d read well enough. Churchill was one of the first to make parody titles (War and Peas, The Merchant of Menace, etc) so popular, although that joke’s been around long enough now that it comes off more than a little kitschy these days. 

Anyway, I found this one in hardcover at Half Price books for $5 bucks, and I liked the cover (a cat peering at an open book, a jar of spilled red ink nearby) and the premise: Jane is attending a nearby mystery writers’ convention so she can hobnob with some of her favorite authors and maybe interest an agent or two in her own first stab at fiction. She drags her faithful friend Shelley along, and together they encounter the usual crazy cast of characters: the scathing, misogynistic book reviewer Zac, the obnoxious, costume-wearing self-pubber Vernetta, and an unknown spy in the mix known only as Ms. Mystery, who makes a career out of attending writer’s conferences, eavesdropping on conversations, then running back to her blog to publish all the nasty, juicy bits she’s gleaned. 

Naturally, no mystery writer’s convention would be complete without a mystery, so the attempted poisoning of one speaker and the head-bashing of Zac the woman-hater fits the bill and occupies Jane’s and Shelley’s time, of which they both seem to have plenty of. 

I always enjoy these cute little cozies, but I have to say I seem to recall Churchill’s writing being a little more skilled than what she shows here, and the characters a little more fully fleshed. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve read one, or she just knocked it out on the quick. Still fun, though.