Death at Breakfast audiobook

I love Agatha Christie but have never cared much for the modern Cozy Mystery. Dead at Breakfast sounds like it might be cozy--there are two older women investigating a case, it's set at an inn in Maine--but it's exactly the kind of thing Christie would write if she were around today. Tight plot, unusual clues, complex characters, intricate solution. This isn't melancholy, dark, serial killer stuff that's so popular in crime these days, nor does it go to the sweet end of the spectrum. This is solidly in the middle, with characters who have their fair share of darkness and difficulty, but enough charm and wit are on display that the book leaves you feeling happily along for the ride.It appears this will be the beginning of a series, and I'm looking forward to it. I can have trouble finding mysteries to recommend to a broad readership and this will definitely be one of them.

I liked the summary of this from the first so I was glad to get to reading it this week. It was a pretty absorbing and quick read. The murder actually takes place about 40% of the way in. The beginning is a set up for the our main sleuths, Maggie and Hope, the other characters staying at the Inn and also the small town locale. Maggie and Hope are newly retired BFFs who have decided to travel and this is their maiden trip to see if they travel well with one another. Adding to the sleuthing is Hope's deputy sheriff son, Buster. I watch what is likely far more British mystery television than is advisable, so in my head, Maggie and Hope were Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme of Rosemary & Thyme, without the accents. I had Hope's son Buster as Laura's officer son, Matthew too. So, I whisked right away with them but they were pretty much tertiary to the solving of the mystery until pretty much the last couple chapters where this all comes together. This makes practical sense, I grant, but it didn't give the reader a lot of time to get to know Maggie & Hope. Still, the case of who killed Alex Antippas turned out predictably & I wasn't surprised by the reveal or reasons of the murderer. All the threads were tied well and I enjoyed how the other characters were woven into the story. I know it's probably not likely but I hope Maggie & Hope run into Detective Prince sometime in the future (I think the Kleinkramers live in LA). The look in at the Antippas family in all their revolting glory was impressive in that there was humanity on display and it was rendered in such a way that made me feel a certain sympathy for people whose lives have become more habitats than habitable for having sought fame. Let me also raise a glass to Walter and I'll pour one out for Grommet. I thought this was a standalone when I began but by book's end, I was fairly sure this was the first in a series. I'm looking forward to the next visit with Maggie and Hope. Definitely recommended & not a bad choice for summer reading.

Beth Gutcheon has written a smart and entertaining mystery. I liked the characters and I was pleased to see it looks like she might be starting a series around them.

Throughly enjoyed this murder mystery set at a failing inn on the coast of Maine. Former teacher and school head Maggie Detweiler and her instantly likable friend, Hope Babbin check into the Oquossoc Mountain Inn expecting rest, relaxation, and a few cooking classes taught by a professional chef. Their idyllic vacation is promptly cut short by the arrival of a trio of persnickety social elites (and their little dog, too!) Aroused from sleep by a suspicious fire the ladies join the rankers of their fellow pajama clad inn mates to gawk at the smoldering mess. When the smoke has cleared the charred remains of one, Alexander Antippas, immediately draw suspicion. With nearly every guest on the list of possible suspects for both murder and arson, Maggie and Hope (unofficially) have their work cut out for them. The amateur sleuths leave no stone unturned and I, left no page unturned, in this well crafted thriller.My only regret being that I read the sequel, unaware it was part of a series, prior to this first installment. Nonetheless, my enthusiasm was not at all diminished for either novel.

I enjoyed this mystery even as I found it a bit scattered. The amateur sleuths, Hope and Maggie, don't seem like they actually do much sleuthing, and the point of view hops all over the place, often stopping to give us the family histories of characters we've just met.Hope and Maggie are interesting characters, but I feel like we see far too little of them! Hope's son, Buster - the deputy sheriff who does a lot of the actual investigating in the case - looks on both of the women as unstoppable forces of nature. I want to see more of that! Maggie is a retired school headmistress, and Hope is a quirky rich widow (former socialite?), and I love that combination in theory, but in practice they often blend together. I wish we spent more time with them and that their personalities were more distinct from each other.(Um, also, I don't like how everyone seems to conflate the fact that the murder victim was a selfish jerk with the fact that he was fat. Many characters act grossed out by his fatness or say judgey things about it. Could have done without that stuff.)I might read more of the series, if I'm in the mood for a good-enough, comfortable book that I won't get worked up over (which, honestly, happens a lot lately).

An unusual duo call on their former friends and coworkers for help to solve a death at a New England inn. Entertaining characters, unusual plot.

When Maggie Detweiler and Hope Babbin arrive at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn set in Bergen, Maine, they are eager to begin the master cooking class offered.Maggie had recently retired from her position as the head of a private school, and Hope was financially secure. Almost immediately, we meet staff, guests, and assorted individuals that populate the town and work the inn, so it felt as though the reader has joined the melee surrounding a busy, yet charming retreat.When a wealthy and imposing man, his wife, and his sister-in-law arrive, the setting turns chaotic. Alexander Antippas is one of those annoying people who expects to be waited upon and kowtowed to, as this has apparently been his experience for many years. Further, he is famous by virtue of his daughter Artemis, and basks in the glow of her celebrity. Right away, however, some staff react against his behavior, thus earning the label “rude,” and one of them, a young girl named Cherry, is fired shortly afterwards.An inn swarming with guests, some of whom are unpleasant, and a few accompanied by yapping dogs, seems to be the perfect cauldron for brewing up disaster. A middle of the night fire turns deadly, and within hours, the state police, brushing aside the assistance of local law enforcement, including Buster Babbin, Hope’s son, rush in and hurry to judgment.Why is Shep Gordon, the blustering state police officer in such a hurry to make his arrest, ignoring anything but the conclusions he has reached, partially due to his own feelings about the individual? What do Maggie and Hope do to bring some real evidence forward? How does Alexander Antippas’s past figure into what happened to him?Death at Breakfast is the first in a series of new mysteries that will feature the two women stirring up the clues they find wherever they go. I always enjoy books by Gutcheon, and this one is a delightful new beginning. My only complaint: there were so many characters that I had a hard time sifting through them by the end. 4 stars.

Favorite Quotes:“When your picture's being taken, don't you always wonder if it's the one that will run with your obituary?""His mother was one of those women with the impact of a battleship; you could see her coming like the prow of the USS Nimitz... It mattered little that he knew the objects of his terror thought of themselves as good-natured middle-aged women, salt of the earth and beloved of the young.""Some of us are content and at ease in the worlds we are born to, and some of us know we've been raised by wolves and take decades to find our true native landscapes. There is no point in trying to explain this to the wolves."My Review:I was captivated by this story and adored the author's smartly written and ingenious plot from start to finish. The genre is a bit of a hybrid - part women's fiction, part cozy mystery that wasn't so cozy, and it could also fall into literary fiction. I personally classify it as superb and a total treat to read. The story was clever, enthralling, and highly entertaining. I reveled in the dry and sneaky humor and frequently smirked, snorted, and barked aloud. It was deftly written, well paced, and keenly detailed with amusing and insightful tidbits that presented a veritable smorgasbord of information, which either had me chortling with glee or was tugging at my heartstrings. There was a large cast of varied characters with no one being quite what they seemed. Each character had either a rather difficult or quirky personality, with even the lesser appealing or limited characters being rather complex at their core once they had been fully fleshed out. I was fascinated as the layers were peeled back, and while I was completely satisfied by the conclusion, I am typically greedy with excellent writing, so I still wanted more.

I nearly always enjoy a cozy mystery series that features senior sleuths so Death at Breakfast had a head start with me from the beginning. I also enjoyed the setting in a bed and breakfast because such a location allows for a diverse cast of characters rather than the usual somebody-in-this-small-town-must-be-the-killer scenario and it accommodates a group of people who are mostly strangers to each other. Those points open up the solution to the crime to a wide range of possibilities.Another aspect of the story that works well is that the murder doesn't occur until well into the book. Normally, I prefer it to happen early on but, in this case, the delay gives the reader the opportunity to get to know the B&B guests and staff as well as a few townspeople so I really didn't mind.Maggie Detweiler and Hope Babbin are a pair of sleuths I'm happy to have met. Intelligent and friendly, they're using this trip to Maine to see if they can stand each other well enough to do some traveling together, a terrific idea. They're not snoopy, either, just well-suited to think about various potential clues and come to a rational conclusion. Very appealing sleuths, indeed. I also liked deputy sheriff Buster Babbin, Hope's son, who's definitely conflicted in his feelings about his mother and who suffers from a lack of self-confidence; watching some of those issues get worked out was a worthy side trail.I have to admit that I figured out the general solution to who hated the obnoxious Alexander enough to kill him in a rather gruesome manner fairly early but not the details so the actual denouement held some surprises for me. I suspect each succeeding entry in the series will be tighter and I'm hoping this will become a long run.

Pure pleasure read. Honesty disclosure - I got this book as an uncorrected proof back in April and it has been living in my night stand since then. I thought the cover looked spooky and so I had been moving it down in the pile - I WAS WRONG. I have never read this author before but now I will be looking for her other books. This was an entertaining mystery. Not in the cozy genre but leaning in that direction but with more substance in the plot and characters. Oh and a winner - two of the main characters are women who are older than 30! While you never see their age you can guess late 50's to early 60's and what a refreshing change to have strong intelligent women of this age in the book! Final note- it's not spooky at all.

Gutcheon is an old fashioned story teller= and I was happy to receive this ARC from edelweiss to get a look at her new novel. She's done a boffo job with the characters and the story does not descend into the more traditional sweet cozy scenario, largely because the are so well written and mature. I really enjoyed this one. The Maine setting is nice (especially if you've vacationed there). Thumbs up!

A good start out of the gate for a promising new series. The two heroines and the large supporting cast were a very pleasant surprise in that they were fully developed 3-D people who could easily have been stock characters or stereotypes in the hands of a lazier or less skillful writer. I look forward to reading about Hope's and Maggie's next adventures.

Nice mystery with a full cast of well drawn characters, good dialog, bits of humor, and a few surprises. Gutcheon is a fine writer and I look forward to more of this series.

Looking forward to the rest of the series!

I have read every word Beth Gutcheon has ever written and I see no reason to stop reading her for the foreseeable future.Maggie Detweiler and her BFF, Hope Babbin, arrive at the Oquossoc Inn in Maine for a cooking course. They enjoy getting to know their classmates, but then some new arrivals check in, and the ladies are not happy to make their acquaintance. Alexander Antippas, his wife, Lisa, and Lisa's twin sister Glory come for a stay with their yappy little dog, Colette, and proceed to get under just about everyone's skin. The dog is loud, the two women horn in on the cooking course, and Alexander is obnoxious in every possible way, from insisting that his accommodations be just so to repeatedly sending back an entree at dinner. So when Alexander's charred corpse is found in his bed after a fire in his wing of the Inn, almost every character we've met falls under a cloud of suspicion, as no one liked him and some had good reason to wish him dead.Maggie and Hope determine that they must find out the truth and, at the same time, exonerate an Inn employee who is arrested and charged with murder after a heap of circumstantial evidence comes to light. With the help of Hope's ne'er-do-well son Buster, who happens to be a deputy sheriff in the small town, and a couple of other well-placed friends, they set out to uncover the identity of the real killer and clear a young girl's name.It's fast-paced, it's funny in spots, and I quickly came to like the two main characters. I've seen a sequel in this soon-to-be series, and I'm into that one next.

Maggie and Hope, two retired ladies, plan an idyllic vacation at a Maine hotel, partly because it's located in the same town as Hope's long-estranged son Buster (who was also a student of private-school teacher Maggie). The group at the hotel is harmonious enough, until a wealthy businessman, his unhappy wife (and the wife's annoying dog), and her B-movie star twin sister arrive, soon antagonizing most of the other guests and the staff. When he dies suddenly, the police (a group that includes deputy sheriff Buster) suspect murder and soon find a suspect. Maggie, Hope and Buster aren't so sure, and when these ladies have a cause, they do something. Gutcheon cleverly uses pov's other than the ladies, even including the victim's and members of his family. The culprit and motive were a bit obvious, though cleverly positioned. I hope this is the start of a series.