Review of COLD SNAP by Maureen Jennings

 2 Stars

I decided to read this third installment of the Paradise Café Mysteries.  I know a fourth book is planned for next year, but this will be the last one I read.

It is December 1936.  As foreshadowed in November Rain, Charlotte Frayne’s boss, has brought a Jewish refugee from Germany to Canada.  Charlotte has been asked to help protect that man, Stephen Lucas, who has documents that could supposedly change the government’s attitude to Nazi Germany.  There are people who are trying to prevent that information from being passed on. 

As in the previous books, there is a second case.  Charlotte’s estranged mother Moira reappears; she asks her daughter to find a son, Charlotte’s half-brother, whom she gave up for adoption two decades earlier.  Of course the two cases converge, again in a very contrived way.  What are the chances that for the third time in months, Charlotte is tasked with two cases simultaneously and they connect as in the previous two instances?!

This book is repetitious in other ways as well.  There are several meetings held at the Paradise café where a pattern emerges:  Cal’s daily menu is described; Pearl, the waitress, makes some caustic comments; and there is a disagreement between Hilliard and Wilf as to the entertainment being planned.  Again, Charlotte is co-opted by the police to take notes at interviews.  Then Detective-Inspector Jack Murdoch shares significant findings with her and even asks her to accompany the police to a potentially dangerous arrest.  Police would never involve civilians like this. 

I was really irked by the repeated delays.  Characters don’t share information, stating that they will do so at a later time.  Then Charlotte wants to share with others, but always seems to be out of time.  People whom Charlotte interviews, like Sister Ambrose and Mrs. Stafford, have only a few minutes to spare so Charlotte has to return a second time. 

And then there are the inconsistencies.  On page 258, Charlotte makes notes of a conversation and lists the four people in attendance.  Then, on page 266, Pearl bursts into the room calling for Hilliard, yet he is not one of the four present and there’s no indication he came in at any point.  On page 144, Mrs. Stafford states unequivocally that she would never show anyone the content of a resident’s box without his consent, but then, on page 295, she does exactly that?  Where was the editor? 

This series has deteriorated.  The first book, Heat Wave, offered some interesting historical information, but this one contains nothing new.  The plots in the second and third books follow the pattern established in the first.  Such formulaic plotting with unrealistic events has little interest for me.