Welcome to the first Cozy Crime time review! The paramount book on the chopping block is The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day.

Giant Dragon Ball Lamp: Conversation piece and potent symbol for your living room

Genre: Historical, romantical  
POV: First person  
Detective: (Caroline) Fremont Jones - Typewriter, small business woman and knife-cane owner
Setting: Turn-of-the-century San Francisco
Fusspot Inner Great Aunt Sexy Times Alarm: Raised eyebrows (two) and tsking 
 
(Caroline) Fremont Jones is a sensible young woman. So when her father decides to remarry an insipid lady who thinks that cucumber sandwhiches are the height of fashion and has some very strange ideas about marrying Fremont off to her nephew, she does the only sensible thing. She heads west and forges a new life in San Fransisco sans gibbering nephew.

She opens a typewriting shop and soon has a host of interesting clients. There's Justin Cameron, the charming lawyer whose smile melts her heart. The troubled young writer who drops off a manuscript of deeply disturbing stories in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe which he swears are true and then disappears. Li Wong, the elderly tong leader, who is murdered days after dictating a will in her shop. And finally, there is Michael Archer who may or may not be a Russian spy.

Typewriting: More exciting than you might think

Soon Fremont is embroiled in murder, kidnapping and missing wills. One of her customers holds the key to a fortune and the other to a terrible secret.

I would recommend The Strange Files of Fremont Jones to: Anyone who enjoys historical mysteries with strong-willed heroines with a little sexy times. Readers who thought that Edgar Allen Poe needed more demon frogs.

I would not recommend this book to: Readers who are not fans of the first person POV. Even though the book is from Fremont's POV, I had a hard time following her decisions or feelings. It sometimes felt like following a scavenger hunt of clues through someone's brain who didn't really want you to find the treasure and instead wanted to send you to the shop to get them some bread. There's also a fair bit of purple prose (especially during the sexy times) and some eye-rolling stupidity on the part of the heroine.

If you like Fremont Jones: The Arcane series by Amanda Quick. Sassy heroines, dark secrets and making out in greenhouses.

The perfect tea to read while walking the foggy streets of San Fransisco with Fremont: In one of the book's most thrilling scenes, Fremont ventures into Chinatown to meet the wife of the tong leader, Li Wong. There's some wonderful historical detail about the Chinese in early California and some delicious tea.

Lapsang Souchong is the first tea is recorded history. This musky, smoky tea hails from the Fuijian Province in China. It is roasted over pinewood smoke which gives the tea its distinctly woody flavour. It tastes like a woodsman's boot. But a delicious woodsman's boot.

The Chinese Tea Shop in Vancouver (a must-see if you're even in Vancouver. The owner is a tea wizard who also demonstrates traditional tea ceremonies in the shop) stocks an amazing variety of Lapsang Souchong teas that will put your right in Fremont's shoes.

Final Grade: 6.5/10

The indomitable Maggie Hope from Mr Churchill's Secretary is back in a new adventure where Princess Elizabeth bites a Nazi:

Genre: Historical
POV: Third Person Omniscient
Detective: Maggie Hope - American mathematician and spy
Setting: WWII England
Fusspot Inner Great Aunt Sexy Times Alarm: As unobjectionable as a blancmange 

Maggie Hope, who we last saw dismantling IRA bombs in St. Paul's Cathedral, has flunked out of spy school. Brilliant mathematician she may be but her superiors think it unlikely that she'd be able to outrun a toddler in the field. Demoted, she is sent packing to Windsor Castle to play Jane Eyre to the young royal princesses.

Princess Elizabeth: Badass

Between teaching the young princesses secret codes, Maggie is tasked with smoking out a spy in the hallowed royal halls. She isn't there long before a gruesome murder alerts her to the fact that something is rotten in Windsor Castle. And it isn't the turnip pie.
  
I would recommend Princess Elizabeth's Spy to: Fans of the brilliant Foyle's War television series. Although less in this book than the first, there are lovely details about life on the home front. This book is much more spy vs spy than Mr. Churchill's Secretary. Maggie fights the oppressive bureaucracy and sexism of MI-5 to get the pieces of the puzzle she needs to save the country from a terrible plot. There's also the wrenching news that John, her love interest from the last book, is MIA in Germany. And Hugh, her new potential gentleman caller and handler from MI-5, embroils her further in her parent's personal drama (highlight for spoilers: Her German-spy mother killed Hugh's father. So, some potentially awkward Christmas dinners for sure).

I would not recommend this book to: People who loathe omescient third person. Unfortunately, I am one of these people. Shifting multiple POVs in a mystery novel can be done effectively. It can build suspense (you see the villain closing in on our hero and they are running out of time!) or help the reader piece together parts of the mystery that the detective will never have access to (Ah. So that's why Mr. Pickett knit his cat a sweater).

But if clumsily handled, it can be an unending source of frustration as the reader end up thinking the detective is a class A idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Or the entire book becomes an excruciating plod until the detective catches up to where the reader has been patiently waiting for chapters and has already eaten most of the narrative picnic.

The plot also got a little twee and out of hand for me (highlight for spoilers: With the king getting shot and then Princess Elizabeth, Maggie and David being kidnapped and then shunted onto a Nazi submarine before escaping the middle of the channel by the Royal Navy but not after Princess Elizabeth bites a  Nazi). Consider my credibility stretched.



If you like the Maggie Hope Mysteries: Try the brilliant thriller Enigma by Robert Harris. Set in the English code-breaker headquarters at Bletchley Park, it features the brilliant mathematician, Jericho, who is recovering from a nervous breakdown after a love affairs turned sour. When his former lover disappears and is branded a spy, Jericho is determined to discover the truth in the matter and discovers a dark conspiracy that could bring down the entire British war effort.

Also made into a fantastic movie featuring Kate Winslet in the cutest 1940s glasses you've ever seen.

Solve all the crimes, Kate Winslet

And what does one drink while undercover tutoring Princess Elizabeth and hunting double agents?

Why, Keep Calm and Carry On tea, of course.


Final Grade: 6/10

This book represents a professional failing but also the awesomeness of old-timey lamps

Bad Children's Librarian Confession Time: This is not something I tell everyone. In fact, I`ve never uttered these words aloud. Once, I whispered them to my teddy bear in the night and then promptly buried him in the backyard because he was a snitch.

(This is a lie. I could never hurt Theodore).

I've never read Bridge to Terabithia.

Yep.

Never. I skipped out on Katherine Paterson`s classic about running and friendship and rural poverty and imagination and loss when I was a kid. I faintly remember a few adults placing it in my hand  but it had one of those stickers on it. The stickers that my 11 year old self was convinced were warning that adults put on super boring books which probably ended with a dead dog.

So I've decided to fix this personal and professional embarrassment in the only way I know how: Eating cake and reading tons of books. Probably at the same time.

This blog will chronicle my journey through classic children's literature. My tentative list is on Goodreads: 100 Books for my Eleven Year Old Self.

For each book, we will see who was right: Professional adult or finicky 11 year old.