Here's what I chose for the Cosy Mystery category of my 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge..
MY THOUGHTS:
This is a retro Aussie tale set in the Surrey Hills and King's Cross areas of Sydney in 1965.
The mystery starts when a tea lady named Hazel Bates spots a beautiful young woman peering through the window of an abandoned warehouse building, scribbling a cryptic message on the dusty glass. That very night the building goes up in flames. And next door at her own workplace, Hazel discovers the murdered body of Mr McCracken, the new bookkeeper. Hazel and her friends suspect that these seemingly separate events may be connected.
They are tea ladies who each work at different fashion houses in the same block. Betty Dewsnap at Farley Frocks loves her little comforts. Irene Turnbuckle at Silhouette Knitwear is a gruff, gossiping pipe-smoker. Merl Perlman at Klein's Lingerie is an opinionated former teacher. And Hazel, at Empire Fashionware, is any business's ideal tea lady; wise, kind, and tactful.
Hazel understands that she's in the unique position to straddle all the social boundaries within her workplace building, from the humble machinists downstairs, and the hardworking accounts team in the middle, to the big nobs on the top storey. These include sisters Jean and Ivy who design the dresses, and the managing director father and son team. Hazel's unspecified tasks include trouble-shooting and smoothing ruffled feathers. She makes a point of always repeating compliments and never criticisms. She also has a wonderful memory for names and details, along with how everyone likes their tea and coffee.
Quite apart from the murder and suspected kidnapping, Hazel's employers are in jeopardy. Ever since Jean Shrimpton, the celebrity model, was photographed in a miniskirt, demand for their own staid, classical designs has plummeted. If the pompous powers that be refuse to jump on board with the dynamic fashion revolution, everyone will lose their jobs.
And Hazel's husband of five years, Bob, is behaving very strangely. Suspicious evidence that he might be living a double life seems to suddenly pop up everywhere.
Although I love Hazel's warm and gracious personality, I've got to say this is a mediocre mystery. The other plot threads, which have nothing to do with it, steal its momentum. And despite the tea ladies' sleuthing, they never really stir up any discrete motives for us to latch onto, which means that none of the nebulous workplace or underworld characters gain true suspect potential for us readers.
What's more, apart from Hazel, the tea ladies themselves are painted larger than life instead of being finely nuanced. Often they read more like archetypes than actual women. And even the urgency of the situation with Bob seems to simply peter out. (What was he thinking?! We don't get to really explore his character and situation either.)
The dialogue is natural and often funny, but mere talking doesn't make a good mystery. I suspect the many four and five star reviews I see on Goodreads have more to do with comic conversations and nostalgic trips down memory lane for several readers than they do with the quality of the mystery itself. And perhaps it is a reasonable historical workplace saga, although it's a subpar cosy mystery.
I see this is just the start of a whole series of cosy mysteries starring these tea ladies, but based on this lukewarm beginning, I think I'll pass. It became a bit of a slog toward the end of the book, precisely at the stage when it should've been a page turner.
🌟🌟½
Note: The Tim Tams and Iced Vo Vos in my photo actually feature in the novel as selections from the good 'upstairs' biscuits. Hazel, the tea lady, judiciously distributes them downstairs as she sees fit. And any fellow Aussie reading this will vouch that they're delicious.
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