A genuinely enjoyable collection of puzzles - although deceptively marketed!

Jennifer Rowe's detective Verity Birdwood, a TV researcher-cum-PI with a mousy appearance but a brain like a steel trap, appeared in five engaging puzzle mysteries during the 1980s and 1990s. I'm forever disappointed that there weren't more. Birdie is great fun as a detective, and Rowe's mysteries are right up my alley: they're not dense or laden with additional plot (she's no Dorothy L. Sayers). No, they're classic puzzles; the narrative and the characters are merely window dressing for a game of logic with the reader. (This will sound overly mechanical to some crime fiction lovers, I recognise.)

Death in Store is something a little different: a series of 8 short stories in which Birdie saves the day. The book is under 200 pages, so the stories are required to dispense with any unnecessary miscellany. Several are told to us in retrospect, whether over coffee with her best friend Kate or drinks with trusty policeman Dan Toby. They range from the intricately plotted (puzzles where the reader feels like they could almost solve the murder with one more clue... only to realise Rowe gave you everything you needed) to the semi-"hard-boiled, i.e. where the fun is more in watching Birdie assemble clues using pieces of knowledge we didn't have access to. Some mystery writers (Conan Doyle) are better in short story; others (Christie) come alive in novels. Rowe - at least in her Verity Birdwood guise - seems to handle both with aplomb. The short story format suits Birdie well, as we get an avalanche of clues which only her logical mind can dispose of in record time. Of course, the downside of a mystery short story is that inevitably there is less time for the reader to grappled with the problem, so it's a 50-50 proposition.

I should say, however, that I'm not a fan of Doubleday's tricky marketing! The title of the book is that of the final short story in the collection. If you were to read the blurb, or the inside jacket cover, you'd suspect this was a novel (and a "holiday mystery" novel, at that). The fact that there is no table of contents would back you up on that suspicion. Were the publishers concerned that murder short stories wouldn't sell? I can only assume they were. The first and last stories in the book have a Christmas theme, but those in between are completely eclectic. It's a strange decision, that seems to me to build bad faith with the reader. Nevertheless, it's been 27 years, I suppose I can let that one slide.

A pleasing volume. ( )

Opening Sentence: ‘…Detective-sergeant Dan Toby considered the ghost of Christmas past…’

Death in Store by Aussie Author, Jennifer Row, is a collection of eight short mystery stories, set at Christmas, starring amateur detective Verity Birdwood (Birdie). In the first tale she meets up with her friend Dan and over Christmas Eve drinks tells him of her first case, where she solves the mystery of a rich man, married to a young woman, at the annual neighborhood street Christmas party. This is followed by other tales, such as the death of a sunbather on a beach – a nasty woman – but no one was near her. Then an investigation into the strangling of a farmer’s wife – her friend’s retarded son has been blamed and Birdie needs to prove his innocence. The final story follows how Birdie gathers clues before naming the murderer of a popular and elderly department-store Santa and his ditzy young photography assistant.

Cleverly plotted and peopled by interesting and realistic characters, a nice light read in the silly season. ( )