Dead as a Scone.

Dead as a Scone 

Ron and Janet Benrey

Barbour Publishing Inc.

P.O. Box 719 1810 Barbour Drive Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683

Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]

www.barbourbooks.com [e-mail]

159310197X $8.97

Ron and Janet Benrey are a professional writing duo who live in Maryland. Ron is a graduate of MIT, holds a masters in management and a law degree. Janet is a native of Kent, England and has a degree from the University of Pittsburgh. They have written several books together, and Ron has had an extensive career writing books and articles for CEO's. He also is a veteran speaker for Fortune 100 companies.

The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum is an esteemed establishment with an acting director in the person of Nigel Owen, a permanent curator named Flick Adams, and an elderly heiress named Dame Elspeth Hawker. Dame Elspeth suspects someone is switching pieces of the museum's collection and substituting fakes. She has a pretty good idea who is behind it, but before she can report to the trustees, she is the victim of a murder. Only Flick Adams, who has a Ph.D. in food chemistry and a fairly extensive background in toxicology, is suspicious. Dame Elspeth has been her valued friend, and Flick is certain that the doctor, Sir Simon Clowes, also a trustee, is wrong in his diagnosis that Dame Elspeth expired from heart problems. Flick finds herself in hot water when she shares her theories, but Nigel finally makes the right choice and comes to her rescue, in spite of his misgivings:

"Why had he offered to help? Probably because vague pangs of remorse kept reminding him that he had intentionally ignored two opportunities to do right by Flick Adams. He might have eased Flick's sequential scoldings-first by DI Pennyman and then by the trustees-if he had repeated what Elspeth said on the day she died."

DEAD AS A SCONE is a delightful and warm tale written in the Agatha Christie "cozy" style. The team of Ron and Janet Benrey craft a tantalizing love story behind the whodunit tale of poison, pets hovering by to encourage the sleuths, and the world of art, tea, and baking. Old and grievous wounds figure as the motive, and the setting of the museum in the actual town of Tunbridge Wells reels in the reader with visions of marble, dead bodies, and intrigue.