Death by Darjeeling (A Tea Shop Mystery)
by Laura Childs
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Book Summary Information
Author: Laura ChildsEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN: 0425179451
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Berkley
Book Reviews of Death by Darjeeling (A Tea Shop Mystery)
Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
Other reviewers have detailed the flaws in this book. I wanted to like it, because as an expatriate Southerner I dote nostalgically on books with Southern settings and a lot of local color. This one, with its cozy tea shop setting in historic Charleston, seemed like a sure thing. As a long-time armchair traveler, I didn't mind the travelogue aspects of the book and having never been to Charleston didn't know whether the descriptions were accurate or not. (Apparently not.) I love tea, and thought it might be interesting to learn more about it. (I gather that info is less than trustworthy, as well.) I didn't even particularly mind the shoddy characterizations, or the fact that Theo is a wish-fulfillment character whose life you want to have, rather than any conceivable actual person.
No, what put me off going on with the series was the bad writing. (Sometimes that improves over time with new authors, but I understand that is not the case with Childs.) The switches in point of view not only keep us from seeing the world through Theo's eyes, but also undermine any effort to create convincing characters, and--as another reviewer said--it is very jarring when it happens, and it jars every time it happens. It also contributes to the silliness quotient, because all too often the switch in point of view is for the sake of slathering more praise on the heroine. Childs also needs a lot of work on her diction. I suspected I was in for a long slog on line 6 of the book, when the hair that Theodosia pushed back couldn't be just curly, but had to be naturally curly, although I liked the image of a friendly Medusa. Childs is better with descriptions of scenery and weather (despite the overuse of adverbs, flowery adjectives, and clichés) than she is with her descriptions of human actions and emotions, which are almost invariably both clichéd and oddly off--choppy and abrupt in effect. And she badly needed an editor: in one place we are told that a character "wouldn't have not" done something when clearly what was meant was "wouldn't have" done it or "would not have" done it.
I also really didn't understand how Childs could describe arsenic as "undetectable" and death from arsenic-poisoning as sudden, since anyone who has ever read an arsenic mystery knows that it is one of the easiest poisons to detect and that death from arsenic-poisoning may be drawn-out or fairly sudden, but either way it is an ugly and painful way to die. Perhaps what she intended to say was that it is tasteless when added to tea.
There is one other issue that bothered me in the book, an omission that I hope is corrected in later books of the series. I appreciate that cozies are in part a way of escaping from distressful reality (despite all those murders), but it's a pity that a book that is set in Charleston doesn't have a single character who is identifiable as African American. There is a self-congratulatory half-page in which we are told that Aunt Libby refuses to tear down the slave shacks on her plantation grounds because she doesn't want to make the truth of the Southern past invisible; that's the first mention of black folks in a book where present-day black Charlestonians are otherwise invisible. Now that's irony! Couldn't Haley be black? Or even the presumably gay Drayton? As it is, the book really does feel like the 1950s--as in whiter-than-white 1950s television. I'm not asking for true realism, just for adding a touch of the interracial New South to the cozy Southern setting. Otherwise, the books might as well be set in Vermont.
Summary of Death by Darjeeling (A Tea Shop Mystery)
When a man is poisoned by tea, Theo is the prime suspect. Now she has to prove her innocence and track down the real killer-before someone else takes their last sip. Just the right blend of cozy fun and clever plotting.
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