It’s been an enjoyable and murder-free time for Judith, Suzie and Becks – AKA the Marlow Murder Club – since the events of last year. The most exciting thing on the horizon is the upcoming wedding of Marlow grandee, Sir Peter Bailey, to his nurse, Jenny Page. Sir Peter is having a party at his grand mansion on the river Thames the day before the wedding, and Judith and Co. are looking forward to a bit of free champagne.
But during the soiree, there’s a crash from inside the house, and when the Marlow Murder Club rush to investigate, they are shocked to find the groom-to-be crushed to death in his study.
The study was locked from the inside, so the police don’t consider the death suspicious. But Judith disagrees. As far as she’s concerned, Peter was murdered! And it’s up to the Marlow Murder Club to find the killer before he or she strikes again….

I enjoyed ‘Death Comes To Marlow‘ a little more than ‘The Marlow Murder Club‘. It seemed to me that the writing had improved: the exposition was smoother and the main characters were more nuanced, as if Robert Thorogood had gotten to know them better. 

As with the first book, much of the humour comes from the dialogue between the three members of the Marlow Muders Club and plays on the different ways that they see and describe the world and the attention they pay to all the small markers of class and privilege that sit just beneath the surface of so many social interactions.

Becks, the vicar’s wife and the one who best fits into the monied and titled world in which the murder takes place, got a little more air time and a little more backstory and the book was all the better for it. Judith has become a little less prickly but remains imperious and unstoppable and Suzie adds some earthy pragmatism and also got a little more development in her role as volunteer radio host on the local radio.

I liked that DS Tanika Malik seemed to become an honorary member of the Marlow Murder Club this time around. The change at work that facilitated this made the plot more plausible and allowed the relationship between Judith and Tanika to become more personal. 

I thought ‘Death Comes To Marlow‘ had a much stronger plot than its predecessor. The locked-room puzzle at the heart of the mystery was ingenious and compelling and the way the big reveal was handled was original, and clever and helped further to build the relationships between the main characters. The plot was complicated and elaborate but required less suspension of disbelief than the first book. I also benefitted from having a plausible and interesting suspect pool. 

It seemed to me that there was a clear subtext to this novel: Men are even dumber than they look but may still be dangerous. Women are smarter than they will let you see and can be just as dangerous.

‘Death Comes To Marlow’ kept me entertained and deepened my engagement with the main characters. I’m now looking forward to the third book, ‘The Queen Of Poisons‘ which is due to be published in January 2024

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