From Publishers Weekly
Nefarious doings take a backseat to the flamboyant shenanigans of a contemporary artist in Miss Seeton's latest brush with crime (after Sold to Miss Seeton). A number of elderly pensioners in Plummergen are dying, apparently by accident or suicide, after having suddenly depleted their savings. Miss Seeton has her hands full, however, with Antony Scarlett, a sculptor determined to use Miss Seeton's Plummergen cottage as the mold for his latest project, which involves filling the house with chocolate. Dressed in his signature black velvet cloak lined with red satin, Scarlett descends upon Miss Seeton's home. On his trail is the redheaded beauty and rejected model Tina Holloway, who has grown to despise chocolate but desperately wants Scarlett back. Demonstrating their own distinctive creative talents, the village women observe Scarlett coming and going and conclude he is a vampire in search of virginal sustenance. Miss Seeton takes Holloway in hand, and soon the young model finds her own artistic talent, true love and the final clue necessary to solve the series of deaths known to police as the Pauper Pensioner Puzzle. As usual, the puzzle isn't much, but watching the avant-garde Scarlett among the rustics adds a sort of dotty English sitcom slapstick to this lighthearted, lightweight series.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The genteel, umbrella-toting retired schoolteacher Miss Emily Seeton finds herself in another muddle. A much-hyped artist of theatrical flair appears on her doorstep, wanting to create a chocolate extravaganza out of her cottage. Superintendent Brinton, in a concurrent investigation, searches for rip-off artists who have targeted a group of proud pensioners. Crane (Sold to Miss Seeton, Berkley, 1995) makes much of dramatic screams, swoops, and suicides but dampens their effect with overwrought prose and convoluted sentence constructions. For die-hard fans only.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
