Lesley St. James

I love cozy mysteries. I read a lot of cozy mysteries. It was a real pleasure reading The Sweet Scent of Death by Lesley St. James because the location of a big city instead of a small town was such a nice change of scenery for me.

The other huge thing that The Sweet Scent of Death has going for it is that St. James doesn’t use a lot of repetition to increase her word count, instead there are well written descriptions of the city, wardrobes, and events. Combine that with interesting characters that are very developed for the first book in a series, and you have an excellent book.

Sometimes when books are so descriptive I find myself skimming to get to the mystery, but I hung on St. James’s every word. The world of public relations and rich clients that she created was so fascinating that I didn’t want to miss anything. Adding in parental units towards the end of the story gave it the cozy charm to balance out some of the snobby attitude, which was perfect.

While I had my suspicions early on as to the killer, St James put a nice twist on the way the murderer is caught, instead of the usual one on one ending with the protagonist going off by herself to confront the killer.
St. James took the cozy genre and made it her own, and I am looking forward to book two in the Jill Cooksey Mysteries, Death of a Dolly Waggler.… (meer)