Publisher's Weekly Review
Two puzzles tax Faith Fairchild in Agatha-winner Page's genial 19th mystery featuring the Aleford, Mass., caterer and amateur sleuth (after 2009's The Body in the Sleigh). When an audit finds more than $10,000 missing from the minister's discretionary fund at Aleford's First Parish Church, suspicion falls on Faith's husband, the Rev. Thomas Fairchild, the only person with access to the account. To complicate matters, Ursula Rowe, Faith's friend Pix Miller's elderly and ailing mother, asks Faith's help in dealing with the disquieting letters she's recently received. Secrets, the kind that fester and can make even strong people ill, reach back to the 1920s. Faith juggles her many roles of wife, mother, businesswoman, and confidant with steadfast assurance as she looks into the missing church funds and provides relief for Ursula. Series fans will relish the descriptions of tempting culinary offerings. Recipes round out the volume. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A caterer juggles three mysteries: one old, one newand the third both borrowed and blue.If only Faith Fairchild's life could be as simple as her recipes. (Who'da thunk anyone would need an entire page of directions to explain how to saut some potatoes with sage?) But no sooner does her best friend, Pix Rowe Miller, leave town than Pix's elderly mom confides that unbeknownst to her children, Ursula Rowe had a wastrel brother, Theo, who was murdered in the eponymous gazebo one summer at Martha's Vineyard. Meanwhile, old sourpuss Sherman Monroe accuses Rev. Thomas Fairchild, Faith's husband, of pilfering $10,000 from the Minister's Discretionary Fund. Finally, a rather pixilated Pix calls from Hilton Head, where she and her husband Sam are helping their son plan his big fat South Carolina intermarriage by consuming inordinate amounts of champagne. She lays on Faith (The Body in the Sleigh, 2009, etc.) the news that, in college, she downed a considerable amount of punch and slept with the bride's father, Dr. Stephen Cohenand now he doesn't even remember. Faith juggles the three puzzles while dispensing Gunpowder Punch at the library and Fruit Breakfast Puffs at the Uppity Women's Luncheon Club, all the time pining for her native New York, as Page reminds readers every other paragraph.Even for a minister's wife, the devil's in the details. Page's persistent lack of precision (Faith goes to New York to eat a pastrami on rye with an egg creamtwo Big Apple treats not known to be served together) undermines her authenticity.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.