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DESERT SPRING
by Michael Craft
St Martin's Minotaur, March 2004
272 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0312320809


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I should admit at the outset that me and cozies don't mix. But DESERT SPRING sneaked up on the blindside and proved to be a pleasantly diverting read for a Sunday afternoon with plenty of chocolate to hand to aid digestion!

It's a neat little conceit in that it's a 21st century take on the traditional Golden Age crime fiction. Instead of a load of toffs holed up in an English stately home, American author Michael Craft has transported his cast to an exclusive college in the desert near Palm Springs. It's peopled by such characters as Kiki Jasper-Plunkett -- the kind you never meet in real life and leave you wondering if they really do hang out in some rarefied cage in exotic climes. And the final scene, where heroine Claire Gray gathers the suspects together to unmask the killer, is pure Agatha Christie.

Claire herself is a slightly unconventional star character. She's a highly successful 50-something Broadway theater director who has been poached by super-rich D Glenn Yates to set up a drama department at his Desert Arts College. And she's sleeping with her 20-something leading man Tanner Griffin, who looks set to move on to Hollywood success.

But a cast party after the final performance of the college's spring production goes horribly wrong when top film producer Spencer Wallace is found floating in Claire's swimming pool. She and Spencer always got on well, but she soon finds out he wasn't so popular with others.

The writing creaks at the seams in places -- at one point, with people starting to point the finger at Claire, and the strains of the murder enquiry catching up with her, she reluctantly goes to visit college principal Yates and greets him with: '"Glenn," I said, taking his arm, strolling towards the house, "you're the perfect host. Once again you've arranged for a perfect night in a perfect setting."'

To a non-cozy reader, the book is curiously old-fashioned and ever so slightly arch. You can pretty much guess each twist as it comes, given the heavy-handed signposting. But it's a pleasant enough read, and I suspect will appeal well enough to those readers steeped in that side of the genre.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, April 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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