Book review: The Bookshop Detectives: Tea and Cake and Death, Gareth and Louise Ward

The Bookshop Detectives: Tea and Cake and Death is the second novel by authors Gareth and Louise Ward to feature their fictional counterparts, Garth and Eloise Sherlock. 

As former police officers and current independent bookshop proprietors, the Wards are uniquely positioned to write a book like this: the Sherlocks run a bookshop in a pleasant small New Zealand town – a store staffed by friends who all adore Garth and Eloise’s delightful if temperamental dog, Stevie. Even those who are not big dog lovers will doubtless fall for the mouse-befriending Stevie, whose “preferred position of totally in the way” will likely resonate with more than a few readers.

As Garth and Eloise take it in turns to tell their story (echoing the way the authors take it in turns to write their counterpart’s chapters), you get to know how the bookshop is run. You meet the regulars, you enjoy the badinage and you become pleasantly embroiled in charmingly yet authentically rendered small town life. 

And a key focus of this small-town life? The vitally important Battle of the Book Clubs, an annual fundraiser for the Mighty Oaks cancer support charity. It’s a worthy cause that takes a lot of work to organise, not least because “coming up with fresh bookish questions that the general public will have a chance of answering gets harder each year,” as Garth observes.

But cosy thrillers have their moments and intruding into this congenial milieu is the shadow of Pinter who was ostensibly vanquished by Garth and Eloise in the first novel in this series – The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone. Eloise describes him as a “bastard … dripping his putrescence into my nice clean world”. And he may be in Belmarsh Prison half a world away, but he currently appears to be manipulating a poisoner who’s threatening people involved in the Battle of the Book Club by actually poisoning some of them.

So Eloise and Garth and their friends and dog embark on a quest to uncover the identity of the poisoner. You will enjoy their subtle sleuthing activities and puzzle at the clues presented. And you will revel in the unpredictable yet highly satisfying conclusion. (This reviewer failed to guess the identity of the perpetrator in spite of the cleverly seeded hints.) 

This novel is unashamedly the second in a series and gives every indication that a third is yet to come. There is nothing untoward or unusual in this. But the too-frequent references to Dead Girl Gone are distracting and unnecessary, and the conspicuous hint of an imminent third in the series effectively undermines the impression that this novel works as a stand-alone book. Ideally, you should be able to read and enjoy one book without having to read all the others in a series. The authors haven’t quite achieved that sense here, though.

Read: Book review: Your Friend and Mine, Jessica Dettmann

While cosy crime may not always have been used as a label for this subgenre, such novels date back to at least as long ago as Agatha Christy’s Miss Marple novels or, more recently, Alexander McCall Smith’s Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency stories. Those interested in exploring more about this increasingly popular category could do a lot worse than checking out this ArtsHub’s article on the subject.

For if ever there was a prime example of a cosy crime novel, Tea and Cake and Death is it.

The Bookshop Detectives: Tea and Cake and Death, Gareth and Louise Ward
Publisher: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9781776951024
Format: Paperback
Pages: 328pp
Release date: 1 April 2025
RRP: $34.99