Well, the sex part of this certainly wasn’t as prevalent as the mystery, but it did deliver on Sebastian’s other promise, which was “Agatha Christie, but make it gay.”
Small English village, check.
The mysterious murder of one of their own, check.
The discovery that the small village is hiding a bunch of secrets, check.
An outsider coming in to unearth those secrets, check.
Lonely spy falls in love with traumatized country doctor, check.
This was very sweet in terms of the romance, and pretty clever in terms of the mystery (although I think I would have liked it better had I not just read Magpie Murders, which was such a clever homage to Christie and so pleasurable, and whose murders had multiple similarities to the murders in this book). But Leo Page is not a detective, but a spy, so his goals are a bit different than say, Poirot’s would have been. I liked the way that Sommers and Page just sort of fell into working together as a team, with Sommers using his village connections to glean information Page doesn’t have access to, and I liked the resolution of the mystery as well.
My only complaint, and this has been a complaint for the last few Sebastian books I’ve read, is that I wish it was longer, a little more fleshed out. The mystery aspect was fine, but I wanted to see more of Sommers and Page getting to know each other and flirting, and yes, I would have very much appreciated a longer sex scene (or more sexy scenes in general) than what we got. But I can overlook it in this case because this isn’t just a one-off, but the first book in a series. There’s still lots of room for development down the road.
All in all, fun and worth it. I hope she publishes a hard copy eventually. I really don’t like reading mysteries by e-book.
