Cops drink coffee. They don’t belong in Ellen Rosings’s Victorian tearoom. But when her opening day thank-you tea ends in the murder of the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust, the police invade her haven. Enter Detective Tony Aragon: attractive and unsympathetic, with a chip on his shoulder that goes beyond the murder investigation, and Ellen’s delicate bone china cup is full. Is the murderer one of her honored guests, or the ghost rumored to haunt the building? Will Ellen solve the mystery, or will the Wisteria Tearoom’s premiere turn out to be its – and Ellen’s – finale?
A Promising New Series Her salvation may have just been destroyed by murder.Â
New Mexico cozy mystery It’s taken most of her savings and a lot of work to get the old adobe home in Santa Fe ready to be used as a fancy English tea room with Victorian touches. There are many different rooms, each with their own touch, and Ellen is very proud of her accomplishment. She offers a thank you tea to those who have helped her on her way. She could never imagine she’d find the president of the preservation society dead in the tea room at the end of the event…Â
I like the individual elements of the book more than the whole Ellen Rosings is the slightly fussy owner of a Victorian tearoom in Sante Fe, New Mexico, who finds herself thrust into the role of amateur sleuth when a woman is murdered in her dining room. I say “slightly fussy” because she agonizes over what her staff should call her because she doesn’t want them to address her by her first name, claiming she cannot give in to “modern casualness,” and also because she is irritated when police officers intrude on her tearoom to investigate the murder because…