Bell, Book, and Scandal

By Jill Churchill Copyright 2003

The main character in this mystery novel is amateur detective Jane Jeffry, a housewife who lives in America's Midwest. Her character is an aspiring writer who is trying to find a publisher for a historical mystery novel she is writing. So to further her goal, she attends a mystery writers conference along with her friend Shelley.

While at the conference, a bossy woman who is a publisher's agent becomes ill after eating a box of poisoned chocolates. Also, an obnoxious writer of book reviews is found knocked unconscious and in his hands is found a page torn from a book. Jane investigates these incidents and discovers they are related to a case of plagiarism. At the end of the book she discovers the culprit, but she doesn't report the culprit to the police, because the woman who was poisoned, and the man who was knocked out, were both unpleasant people whom she didn't like.

The mystery part of this story doesn't really begin until about half way through the book, and when it does begin, it is presented in a very dull and uninteresting manner. One of the problems is that the suspects are not very well developed characters, so their motivations for doing what they do isn't very apparent, so it leaves readers not really caring about the characters or what happens to them.

The first half of the book is taken up by Jane shopping for a new car and attending various seminars at the conference. In fact, after Jane buys a new car, the remainder of the book is mostly just an itinerary for a writers conference. And then added to the itinerary are notes from a participant of the various seminars and workshops attended.

So if you enjoy reading business conference itineraries and the personal notes of someone who attended various meetings and their discussion of who they met and what happened, you may enjoy this book. Perhaps readers who are intensely interested in the subject of publishing and the writing profession may find this book informative, but otherwise everyone else will probably find it a tremendous bore.

Another problem with the book is the main character of Jane Jeffry. She is a silly, petty-minded housewife who seems alternatively astonished and challenged by all of life's little daily trivialities. Every little household task she does, meal that is eaten, shopping trip taken, and drive down the street is profiled in detail and discussed by Jane and her equally silly friend Shelley.

A good writer can often weave the common daily activities of an interesting character into an interesting story, but Jill Churchill apparently isn't one of those writers, at least not in this book. She seems to just verbalize and transcribe many of her own activities. Readers will suspect she actually attended a writers conference while she wrote this book and she simply made bland notes about some of the things she did and saw. That may explain partly why the story lacks imagination, wit, and cleverness.

So needless to say, this book is a waste of time.