Black edged envelopes always signal death in Zoe Zola’s world. Zoe doesn’t want to open it and remember the past. However, her neighbor, Jenny Weston opens it and instead of a death notice, there’s an invitation to a gathering of experts on Agatha Christie. Zoe, an author, is currently writing a book on Agatha Christie, but she still has misgivings about the meeting. She reluctantly agrees to attend. . . but will she survive once the disappearances start?
AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED is the fourth book in A Little Library series. Initially, I had some trouble getting into the storyline as I felt as if I was missing some history from the first three books. In fact, I even read the first book in the series in case that was the issue. However, it appears that Jenny is the main character in the earlier books and that AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED is switching the focus to Zoe and giving us some back story on her family’s history.
I love Agatha Christie and couldn’t resist a book featuring a twist on one of her classic mysteries! AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED was far darker than I expected from a cozy mystery, and the ending is definitely unusual and somewhat startling. I enjoyed Jenny in the first book, A MOST CURIOUS MURDER, and Zoe had grown on me despite her odd mannerisms and the overemphasis on her size (she repeatedly states she is a little person). However, Jenny and Zoe are quite angsty in AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED, making it hard to empathize with them. Perhaps readers who have read all of A Little Library series will appreciate AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED more than I did.
Zoe Zola is one of ten invitees to an Agatha Christie symposium. Tempers flare…and then there are nine. Can Jenny Weston save Zoe from murder on the Upper Peninsula?
Little Person author Zoe Zola believes that one of the unluckiest things in life is to receive an invitation—in the form of a letter edged in black—to an Agatha Christie symposium at an old Upper Peninsula hunting lodge. Her reluctance dissipates when she learns that the organizer is named Emily Brent—the name of a character poisoned by cyanide in Christie’s And Then There Were None.
As a dreary rain soaks the U.P., Zoe and nine other Christie scholars—each of whom bears a vague resemblance to one of the classic mystery novel’s characters—arrive at the lodge. At the opening night dinner, arguments flare over the experts’ discordant theories about Christie. Next morning, the guests find one particularly odious man has gone—whereabouts and reasons unknown. Such a coincidental resemblance to a work of fiction is surely impossible; therefore, it appears to be possible.
As the guests disappear, one by one, Zoe resolves to beat a hasty retreat—but her car won't start. She calls her friend, amateur sleuth/little librarian Jenny Weston, but Jenny will have to wait out a storm off Lake Superior before she can come to the rescue. If Zoe’s to stay alive to greet Jenny when she eventually arrives, she’ll have to draw on everything she knows about Agatha Christie’s devilish plots in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s fourth tantalizing Little Library mystery.
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