“Drawing inspiration from the Golden Age whodunits of Christie and contemporary cozies, Karen Dukess forges her own path in her warm and layered mystery…Romantic, reflective and self-aware.” --Bookpage
Welcome to Murder Week
A Novel
Description
In this delightfully funny and heartfelt new novel from the author of the “bittersweet page-turner” (The New York Times) The Last Book Party, an American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town.
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
Witty, wise, and deliciously escapist, Welcome to Murder Week is a fresh, inventive twist on the murder mystery and a touching portrayal of one daughter’s reckoning with her grief, her past—and her own budding sense of adventure.
Reviews
"Warm, witty...Full of quirky, engaging characters and delicious British details, Welcome to Murder Week is a cream-tea treat for mystery fans and a touching story of a woman coming to terms with her family history." --Shelf Awareness
"An aching family mystery wrapped in a comedic whodunit with a delicious dose of travelogue and romance to boot? That's Welcome to Murder Week: steamy, grief-struck escapism--as genre-defying as it is delightful." —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich
“Welcome to Murder Week is full of delights for fans of Downton Abbey, British village mysteries, romance and, above all, page-turning fun.” —Natalie Jenner, internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society