A Dance with Murder by Elizabeth Coleman

Title: A Dance with Murder

Author: Elizabeth Coleman

Genre: Crime, Mystery

Publisher: Pantera Press

Published: 3^rd January 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $34.99

Synopsis: A charming and cheeky murder mystery with twist and turns aplenty, perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club and The Tea Ladies.

PI Edwina ‘Ted’ Bristol’s latest case is proving complicated. Ballerina Giselle Terreiti is the target of a stalker, but she is also the ex-wife of Ted’s good friend, swordcraft nemesis and cop Spike. While accepting the case is a win for the agency, Ted must distance herself from Spike without explaining why.

As the stalker ups the ante, breaking into Giselle’s house and leaving a disturbing message, Ted throws herself into the investigation, identifying three suspects. She must go undercover via the dating apps to locate her most promising lead, life coach Jarrod, who Giselle dated briefly.

Meanwhile, Ted’s sister Bob refers a curious case: Cecily is trying to find her husband, Pete, who has been missing for a year, presumed dead, after he failed to return home from a day out surfing.

As Ted closes in on the culprit in the stalking case and Spike questions her friendship, a murder turns everything upside down …

~*~

PI Edwina ‘Ted’ Bristol has a new case. Giselle Terreiti is a ballerina, the ex-wife of Ted’s friend, Spike, and the target of a stalker. Ted is part of a PI agency, and she knows this case will make or break the agency. She’s like a modern-day Miss Fisher, who seems to get into scrapes whilst investigating her crimes. But this time, Ted needs to distance herself from Spike to do her job. But can she? And what happens when everything starts colliding in her life and in her cases?

So, as the stalking case evolves, people linked to Giselle and her friends could be implicated, and there’s another case on the cards. Bob, Ted’s sister, brings her a case about a missing husband. Pete has been missing for a year, and his wife Cicely is still looking for him. Things aren’t as simple as they seem in any case. And to top it all off, Ted is dealing with a childhood trauma that has affected how she has grown up and developed her relationships and understanding of the world. It’s a crucial part of who she is, how she relates to people and what she brings to the cases she works on, because it means that everything is carefully considered within the context of the story and her past.

Everything tugs at the threads carefully, bringing in red herrings to divert Ted and everyone else from what has really happened, filtered through a lens tinged with humour. It’s not gritty, it’s a contemporary cosy crime novel, which seems quite popular these days and is growing in popularity in the young adult readership as well. It brings ballet, crime, and the complexities of human nature into being well, and highlights what can happen when worlds collide.

Cosy crime can be fun, and a great introduction to the crime genre, where you can head into the grittier books later on. It’s also a diverse novel, and as this is book two in a series, it does read well as a stand-alone as well. There are things that are probably explained or mentioned in book one, but I was able to put things together to read this and have a good time reading it.

The cases progress throughout the novel slowly, with clever familial interactions that provoked reactions and built tension, giving the novel more than the crimes to talk about. And each crime gives way to the other, where one is solved and then the rest of the story focuses on the plot lines that are left – very well done, and gives the story a sense of being finished whilst also being a crucial part of a series where each book is its own case, but linked by characters and an overarching theme of family and tragedy. I mean, don’t all detectives in fiction have some kind of tragedy in their lives that has shaped who they have become?

This book has it all – stalking, murder, death, tensions and trauma, and everyone is only just getting started in this series. It will be interesting to see where this series goes.