• Author: Paula Sutton
• Series: Potential Series
• Genre: Murder Mystery
• No. of pages: 340
• Dates read: 09.03.24 – 13.02.24
• Publication Date: 04/04/2024
• Star Rating: 5 stars

Plot: Welcome to the sleepy village of Pudding Corner, a quintessentially English haven of golden cornfields, winding cobbled lanes … and murder. Daphne Brewster has left London behind and is settling into her family’s new life in rural Norfolk, planting broad beans in raised beds and vintage hunting for their farmhouse. But when the local headmaster is found dead in his potting shed, amongst his allotment cabbages, the village is ablaze: Who would kill beloved Mr Papplewick, pillar of the community? Daphne soon comes to realise perhaps the countryside isn’t so idyllic after all… When the headmaster’s widow points her finger at Minnerva, Daphne’s new friend, Daphne vows to clear her name. Sneaking into the crime scene and chasing down rumours gets her into hot water with the local inspector – until she comes across a faded photograph that unearths a secret buried for forty years… They say nothing bad ever happens in close-knit Pudding Corner, but Daphne is close to the truth – dangerously close…

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy to review.

This book just solidified for me that the cosy murder mystery subgenre is the best crime subgenre that exists in our universe. It just ticks all the boxes for me. 

And I believe this book is the perfect book to represent the subgenre. This book was a great read with an interesting small village mystery stuffed full of interesting characters and mysterious pasts.

I wanted to talk about a few key points though. Daphne, our amateur detective, does something I haven’t seen many characters do in these stories and that is solve a mystery through compassion. It is through Daphne’s kindness as well as her inquisitiveness that leads the reader to learn more about the village and its inhabitants. It’s Daphne’s kindness that allows these people to open up to her and reveal their closest guarded secrets. And I rarely see that in the mystery genre and it was incredibly refreshing.

The setting of this book is a fully-realised and extensively written. I was so engaged as I pictured the primary school, the corner shop, Pudding Corner, the fete everything. I truly hope this becomes a series as I want to spend more time in Pepperbridge as Sutton paints such a beautiful and vivid picture. I could fully visualise myself walking down the high street. 

The other thing I want to highlight is how great the characterisation was of our suspects. This story follows not only our detective Daphne but also our suspects as they go about their lives. While normally we just follow the detective and learn alongside them all the facts and clues, this time around we get to witness some of the action through the eyes of the suspects themselves. Following the characters the way we do made me feel connected to them on a more personal level and I felt that I understood them more. This made me engage with the book more as a whole as I wanted to learn more about the characters and see what they do next.