I’m a little surprised by the lavish praise and awards heaped on mystery author Jill Churchill, writer of both the Jane Jeffry and Grace and Favor series. Her new Grace and Favor book, WHO’S SORRY NOW?, is certainly entertaining enough, but to have The L.A. Times claim that nothing in Agatha Christie comes close to the depth of these books really brings into question the Times’ literary credibility.

I mean come on, we’re talking Agatha Christie here, the grand dame of cozy-style mysteries. Churchill isn’t in this league.

What she is good at is setting. The series takes place in Depression-era New York, in the small town of Voorburg. Our protagonists, Robert and Lily Brewster, live in the Grace and Favor mansion with a small selection of boarders. Churchill does well to explain the 1930s mores and habits, and the fact that most people had a severe lack of capital at hand.

The Brewsters have a bit of extra dosh, but they still must make ends meet in a town that certainly has seen better days. The setting and the cozy concept of trustee babies as our heroes go a long way to making the book readable.

Because Churchill’s story arc is bizarre to say the least. Half of the book is taken up with building a mail-sorting center, since the town has no real post office. That would be okay, except for the lengthy descriptions of how it might be constructed, how the town council might finance its building, how the employee will be paid, and on and on.

This is counterpointed with the exhumation of a Native American who was buried on the grounds of the mansion many years ago. None of this has anything to do with the mystery. Churchill may be trying to do a whole tapestry of life in that timeframe, but it seems more like three different plot ideas glued into one.

Mixed in with all that are a couple of actual crimes, solved in a manner that doesn’t say a lot for the abilities of the local police chief. The book’s a quick read, with a great set of characters and time frame, but a bedlamite plotting scheme. If you like cozies, and abhor the blood and gore in most of today’s mysteries, then this might be for you. But it’s not a diamond in the rough — more like a bit of pretty quartz. –Mark Rose

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