G.M. Malliet, Death and the Lit Chick

In G.M. Malliet's second lit-themed mystery, DCI Arthur St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary is holed up in Dalmorton Castle, a fifteenth-century Scottish castle turned luxury hotel. The Castle is crawling with literary types, publicists and agents and mystery writers, all gathered to attend a nearby conference where St. Just is scheduled to speak on the subject of real-world criminal investigations. Unfortunately for the attendees, a real-world crime interrupts the proceedings. One of the conference-goers, the widely detested lit chick of Malliet's title, turns up dead in the dungeon.

St. Just's list of suspects is limited since the moat-encircled castle's drawbridge was up for the night at the time of the murder. That should make the job of identifying the killer easier, but most of the cast have something to hide, if not murder, and the castle itself is harboring secrets. The dead woman, darling of the lit world, is not even what she seems.

In this second outing, St. Just is fleshed out a bit more than he was in Death of a Cozy Writer. He's a widower, still mourning the loss of his wife after several years, but for the first time since her death he finds himself interested in another woman, one of his suspects. I like St. Just and want to see more of him in subsequent books.

Malliet's cast of supporting characters is large—rather confusingly so, but a helpful list is provided at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately, none of these secondary characters springs off the page. Much of the book is taken up with interviews of the suspects, so it doesn't feel like there's much of a plot. I'm sure it's possible to keep the suspects' various alibis straight and have a stab at ferreting out the killer oneself, but I would have needed to keep notes in order to do so. In the end, Death of a Lit Chick is an okay read, but it lacks the charm of Malliet's first book.