They Did It with Love

by: Kate Morgenroth

Published by: PLUME/Penguin

Reviewed by Beth Cummings

Members of the Mystery Book Club have to be invited to join by Priscilla Brenner, the group leader and perennial hostess. The other women in the group, Susan, Ashley, Julia and Sofie, are all her neighbors in up-scale Greenwich, Connecticut, a New York City suburb. These women met monthly and were reading Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mystery series.

Then suddenly they are the subjects of their own real life mystery–a murder in their own neighborhood.

Kate Morgenroth has created a thoroughly enjoyable group of women and spouses to populate her book. They are just clichéd enough to feed into stereotypes and then turn out to be something a bit different from the expected. I felt that they were very well drawn and their secrets tended to be a surprise. While it is nearly impossible to decide which characters are lying–and why–as the plot unfolds, the details do seem to hold up without completely stretching credibility.

Since telling any more about the characters or plot might give the whole story away, I won’t do that. I will say that I had a lot of trouble putting this one down to go to bed and to go to work. It is a delightful page-turner.

Armchair Interviews says: This would be a fun book to discuss with a book group.