Death Takes a Hand - Hardcover

Cassie Swan, divorced and formerly a biology teacher, has in six years built a new career as a bridge instructor. She's running a Winter Bridge Weekend at the countrified but posh Broughton Manor Hotel when she finds, in the card room, the bodies of the other members of a scheduled Sunday morning foursome: retired colonel Plumpton and his wife have apparently been felled by heart attacks, and noted weaver Sonia Wetherhead has had her head bashed in with a marble obelisk. As Cassie sees her hard-won livelihood threatened by the publicity that follows, and as Detective Inspector Mantripp gets nowhere, she begins to investigate on her own. Clumsily, she tries to find connections between the victims and other guests--handsome wine dealer Casaubon; the male novelist who writes popular romances as Felicity Carradine; gardening expert Roy Sowerby; and several others, along with hotel owner Felix Ryland. It's a tedious slog, beset by red herrings and Cassie's long- winded ruminations, ending in a predictably dangerous confrontation. Pluses like the frequently charming Cassie, her outrageously crass but lovable rescuer, and Moody's (Mosaic, etc.) blithe, often caustic style are finally overwhelmed by a bizarrely silly plot and rampant wordiness. Readers may reasonably expect better things to come in this new series by a talented, well-known English writer. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Veteran Moody ( House of Moons and the Penny Wanawake series) enlivens her traditional English cozy with a welcome new heroine. Cassie Swann, 30-year-old instructor at a Winter Bridge Weekend in a country hotel, discovers three students dead at their table and sneaks a peek at their hands before calling the police. Cassie, a constant dieter cursed with a Rubenesque form and no luck in love, considers the guests who assembled at the welcoming party the night before, but she can't imagine who might have wielded the blunt instrument that did in the spiteful Sonia Wetherhead (the elderly Colonel and Mrs. Plumpton are determined to have died of simultaneous natural causes). When the next weekend convenes with many of the same (surviving) participants, another old woman dies in her bed. Moody is cagey with her cast of suspects, including a famous author, an editor and a smooth-talking wine merchant named Casaubon. When Cassie isn't teaching bridge or trying to find out who's threatening her new career, she thinks guiltily about desserts and love, fending off the propositions of another student whom she--with yet more guilt--finds crudely proletarian. Adeptly mining laughs from the milieu, Moody leads her likable sleuth to a solution and the promise of success in both business and love.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.