Just like that, Agnes Blythe's life fell apart. Her long-
time boyfriend dumped her, threw her out of their
apartment, and she lost her part-time job. Instead of
going to grad school, as she had planned, Agnes has moved
back home with her father. Agnes was to have lunch with
her father at the local diner, but he wasn't alone; Agnes'
great-aunt Effie Winters was with him, which was not a
pleasant surprise for Agnes. Effie's latest husband just
passed away and she inherited the Stagecoach Inn, a
derelict relic from the nineteenth century, set for
demolition, but Effie will have none of that; her mind is
made up: she will restore the building to its former
grandeur or die trying.
Agnes hadn't seen her great-aunt in fifteen years, not
since the day when Effie, a former model, tried to get Agnes
hired as a chubby teen model. It still chafes because Agnes
still hasn't lost the "baby fat". When Effie offers Agnes a
job at the inn, Agnes flatly refuses, but has to accept when
a "little
mishap" prevents her from getting her old job back at the
library. Agnes had a serious altercation with one of the
woman at the library, the same one who turned up dead the
following day!
At first glance, BAD HOUSEKEEPING seems like a light cozy
mystery, until the bodies start piling up, and then I
realized how very clever the plot really is, because until
then, I had not really noticed, all caught up that I was
in the introduction of Agnes' and Effie's world. Maia
Chance has created unforgettable characters, the ones
legends are made of. Agnes is dumpy but plucky, gloriously
flawed and very relatable. There is also the running gag
of her having to wear her old high school clothes, which
never got old.
Ms. Chance's sparkling wit is at its apex, and the author
had me chuckling and laughing out loud throughout. BAD
HOUSEKEEPING is very fast-paced; the descriptions are so
sharp I could picture everyone and everything; and the
dialogues are superb: Agnes is snarky, a polar opposite to
Effie, who is the epitome of cool and proper, and I could
almost hear their respective voices.
The highlight of this
fabulous book has to be the incomparable characterization:
the characters are marvels of creativity, and Effie is one
for the ages. Effie is a "young" septuagenarian,
glamorous, elegant, stylish, worldly. She breezes through
life, carefree and imperturbable -- or is it because of the
Xanax and the Botox?. She is a take-charge type of woman,
even when she has no clue as to what she is doing. Agnes
and Effie are just about the oddest pair of amateur
sleuths I have ever seen, and they have everything to
become a classic. I adored every word of it, and I hope it
will be a very long series!
When 28-year-old Agnes Blythe, the contented
bifocals-wearing half of an academic power couple, is jilted
by her professor boyfriend for the town Pilates instructor,
her future is suddenly less than certain. So when her
glamorous, eccentric Great Aunt Effie arrives in town and
offers a job helping to salvage the condemned Stagecoach
Inn, what does Agnes have to lose? But work at the inn has
barely begun when the unlikely duo find the body of
manipulative Kathleen Todd, with whom Agnes and Effie both
have recently had words. Words strong enough to
land them at the top of the suspect list.
The pair
have clearly been framed, but no one else seems interested
in finding the real murderer and Agnes and Effie's sleuthing
expertise is not exactly slick. Nevertheless, they're soon
investigating a suspect list with laundry dirtier than a
middle school soccer team's and navigating threats, car
chases, shotgun blasts, and awkward strolls down memory
lane.
In Bad Housekeeping, the first novel
in the Agnes & Effie cozy mystery series by Maia Chance,
danger mounts, deadlines loom, ancient knob-and-tube wiring
is explored, and the ladies learn a thing or two about the
awful, wonderful mistake that is going back home.
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