Book Review: "Tea on Sunday" by Lettice Cooper

Yes, I'm still reading the British Library Crime Classics collection and basically getting together all I can that is free and on Kindle Unlimited. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times - these and the 'Tales of the Weird' collection normally have loads available on Kindle Unlimited if you're willing to pay £8 a month to read as many as you feel like. Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper was written later than the usual Golden Age of British Crime but still has the flavour of an old-time mystery novel. I was glad I got this on Kindle Unlimited because when I looked it up again, it wasn't on offer anymore.

It starts off with a prologue where a woman has set out eight cups for a tea party she has invited her friends to. Looking to get a few minutes of rest in, she goes to put her feet up for a bit when the bell rings. Thinking why someone would be half an hour early for her tea party, she thinks it is perhaps certain members of the group who would have known she was recently talking about them. She goes to answer the door to her unknown early guest. This is where it all begins.

Detective Corby arrives as the group are standing outside of the woman's house and cannot seem to get their hostess's attention. They are seated in one of the rooms and the body of the woman is lying on the first floor. There was no apparent break in and nobody could reach the window as Barry (a guest) had stated it was 'too high' to climb through. When talking to the guests though, Corby notices that there are some of them who either had not spoken to the deceased in a while, had done her wrong in some way in the past or had known her for a terribly long time.

The next few chapters are fairly interesting as the detective goes around interviewing every strange person there is to interview and letting them go as 'responsible citizens'. But, as we walk through this crime novel and meet each individual character, we see that not everything is as it seems. Not only is someone hiding something but we are left on edge as some of the characters are more terse in their replies than others. As the reader plays detective, we analyse everyone with the utmost rigour. Our main question is: how well did our tea party hostess know her killer and did she name them before answering the door to her early guest?

But things are thrown off when a letter is discovered addressed to the dead woman from a person close to her. It is a shifty letter but breaks the case wide open for Detective Corby. It is a damning letter that implicates someone who was already interviewed and yet, where are they? As the detective approaches the house, there is a clear atmosphere that something is wrong. Something that was once known and concealed is about to be revealed and it is far more shocking than the reader or the dead woman could have expected.

One thing we do realise is that even though these supposedly innocent parties are supposedly innocent, everyone either had the motive or were acting weird upon being questioned with the famed character Barry Slater screaming to be let go and that he didn't do anything. Implications run high as the detective becomes frustrated that he isn't getting anywhere with the suspects. It isn't until the final few chapters where we start to get a clear picture of what happened here.

All in all, it is another great achievement of the British Library Crime Classics Collection. A woman is found dead inside her house whilst her tea party guests are waiting to be let in and, like a game of Cluedo, the detective must go around the circles to find out who killed her. With quick and often terse dialogue, it makes for a fast-paced atmosphere which only adds to the urgency to solve the mystery and finally, when it is solved - it is someone the reader has to step back and analyse for themselves.