Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When Rona Parish is asked to write the biography of an acclaimed thriller writer who drowned in unusual circumstances, is she diving into danger?

Biographer Rona Parish is exhausted after finishing her latest project on Arthur Conan Doyle, but her hope for a break between jobs is dashed when the wife of late bestselling thriller writer, Theo Harvey, asks her to write his biography.

Theo Harvey drowned mysteriously six months ago. No one knows why . . .

Theo’s inexplicable death six months ago left many unanswered questions. Why did he retreat from the limelight six years ago, only to reappear three years later and produce two outstanding, if much darker, novels? And what is the truth behind his mysterious drowning? Rona Parish is determined to uncover the truth behind his death, but at what cost?

Intrigued, and with her golden retriever Gus by her side, Rona starts to piece together the author’s life. But someone doesn’t want her to uncover Theo’s secrets. And they’ll go to any lengths to make sure they stay hidden . . .

A page-turning cosy mystery set in the fictional English market town of Marsborough in the stunning Chiltern Hills.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First published twenty years ago, this supremely cozy, very definitely page-turning first-in-series mystery introduces a biographer sleuth...first time I've run into that one!...with a happily unconventional home life, a tidy income from her main career, and a bottomless well of curiosity. It felt to me like a story, and is told in a style, from sixty years ago.

I do not intend an insult with this statement of an observation.

Gender politics will derail any discussion of why I personally find myself squicked out by stalkery behavior. The cultural conversation about this behavior was only just getting started back then, so I can't really point a shaming finger at it; just something I myownself find unpleasant to read. This book, like some of the ones we labeled "romantic" many decades ago, valorizes some things I characterize as really stalkery behavior. That's a very big nope from me. I get it, in the sense that, at a point near the end of the story, the plot really needed something to happen at precisely that juncture. Why the other something that was in already set in motion by a different character and was, in fact, in progress and that occurs with near simultaneity wasn't enough for the author only she knows. A choice she made that I was appalled by, and it really caused me to reassess the prior appearances of the stalkery character in a much less flattering (to the author) light.

A trope that just won't die is the villain infodump. There is one of these at the end. I really rolled my eyes so hard I saw my brain as the guilty party settles in for a cozy chat with people whose murders are essential to the sociopath's happy getaway. The sociopaths I've known wouldn't be that careless. This is, from their point of view, a necessary act not to be lingered over because the risk to them getting away with their awful decision decrease with every delay or diversion from its accomplishment. I've never known a stupid sociopath.

The age of the story shows in multiple ways, eg the fact that Rona goes to her publisher's office and hands him an envelope with a printed version of an article she's submitting. Wow, does that take me back...no one even five years later would conceptualize this as a possibility! It's actually a bit wistfully charming. It dates events, but that's not necessarily bad...just a passing note for informative purposes.

The series character's world is most charmingly set up, and I would absolutely love to live in that village. I would be seriously surprised if a revelation that genuinely shocked me regarding Rona's twin wasn't going to loom large in a future installment. The changing technology of the day wasn't ignored, because Rona does look up the subject of her proposed biography on the Internet (still capitalized back then) and discusses what she's found with the subject's widow. Rona also notes the biography subject's lack of a computer to the widow. So it became even more odd in my eyes that she submitted her article on paper.

There is an instance of an animal being harmed, but it is set up so that the event, while bad, doesn't kill the animal in question. It is used, I felt, gratuitously, though it's later revealed to have been the last straw for the one committing the harmful act. It fell short of my slam-the-book-shut threshold because it's clear there's not going to be fatal outcome very soon after it occurs.

What I most want to convey to you is how high my hopes were set up, and then to be let down by the issues I've detailed above was a deep disappointment. There was every reason to think I'd found a ten-book series that's clearly complete (the most recent was published in 2017) to dive into.

Unfortunately that's not to be. I don't care to risk my own money on books that bid fair to repeat these kinds of unwelcome to me tropes. ( )