Book Review: Mistletoe and Murder by Robin Stevens (2018)

Mistletoe and Murder is the fifth book in the Wells and Wong series by UK author Robin Stevens, which will be published in the US on September 18th. As the title suggests, this mystery is set during the Christmas holiday, which Daisy and Hazel are spending with Daisy's aunt at a women's college in Cambridge, England. Also in Cambridge, but staying at the all-male Maudlin College are Daisy's brother, Bertie, Hazel's friend Alexander and his crime-solving partner George (whom Daisy has always seen as rivals), and a pair of twins, Donald and Chummy Melling, who are about to come of age, at which point the older of the two, Donald, will inherit the family fortune. Daisy and Hazel notice right away that there seem to be a lot of accidents whenever the twins are around, and they suspect the impending inheritance might be the motive behind them. When one of the twins dies as a result of one of these accidents, the Detective Society is desperate to find out who did it, even if it means relying on their rival detective agency for clues and inside information.

The festive holiday atmosphere and new setting make this book feel charming right from the outset. Though I am typically disappointed when a story is not set at the girls' own school of Deepdean, the fact that the backdrop was a university made up for that in this book. I was intrigued by the way colleges so severely segregated students by gender in the '30s and I liked the way the author handled the girls' difficulties in gaining access to evidence in a dormitory they were not even supposed to enter. The fact that Daisy, in particular, was forced to get along with her rivals, felt like a good point of character development for her. I didn't quite feel the same tension in Hazel's friendship with Daisy as I have in previous books, but I also appreciate that some books of this series might just want to tell a really good mystery story without exploring too many subplots.

Truly, my only complaint about this series is how quickly each book goes by and how long I have to wait before the next volume is published in the U.S. Book six, A Spoonful of Murder, just came out in the UK in early 2018 and the Goodreads reviews are all so positive that I'm already dying to know when I'll get to read it!  Thankfully, the author has done a reading on YouTube, so I can at least have a taste to tide me over until it makes its way over here - but I still hope it will be sooner rather than later! (Thanks, as always, to Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC of this book.)