Read in 2023 - 6: A Spoonful of Murder

A Spoonful of Murder 

by J. M. Hall

For a change, I have read a book I bought for myself: Last summer in Yorkshire, we went to Ripley for an afternoon. In the small church next to the castle was a shelf  with second hand books, where I found this paperback. I placed a 2 pound coin in the cash box and took it home with me.

Three friends, retired primary school teachers, regularly meet at a garden centre café. During one of their visits, their former boss – long retired, too – and her daughter happen to be there at the same time.

The former head teacher seems to suffer from the early stages of dementia, and so it is hard to decide on what – if anything – to do when one of the ladies finds their confused friend crying in the toilet because back home, she’d overheard someone saying it would be better if she were dead.

When not long after that encounter the elderly lady is indeed found dead in her home, what she said at the garden centre becomes impossible to ignore. And so, although the common conclusion is that the poor confused woman muddled up her tablets, the three friends start to investigate.

In the end, not only the murder of their old friend is solved, but along the way, the ladies learn a lot about themselves, their relationships with each other and their families.

There is humour but also seriousness; most readers will find similarities between people and situations they know from their own lives. A lot is about what it means to get older, as much for themselves as for their families and friends. Dodgy builders cheating on unsuspecting elderly homeowners are a reality, and the book picks up on that, too, as it does on the challenges in caring for an elderly parent.

For me, much of the book’s charm comes from it being set in the area I know and love – Ripon, Masham and Thirsk, as well as Boroughby, Northallerton and others.

The characters are credible and seem to be modeled on real people, the way they talk and act makes you feel you know them, and care about them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can really recommend it. (And no, it is not just like The Thursday Murder Club – the books only have in common that the heroines are elderly women.)

The author is quite active on social media but does not appear to have his own website as such. The link to a short biography on Amazon is here. Looks like he knows what he is talking about when he writes about his heroines' former work!