{"id":6858,"date":"2026-01-15T06:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6858"},"modified":"2026-01-15T06:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:09:20","slug":"michelle-l-cullen-a-field-guide-to-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/michelle-l-cullen-a-field-guide-to-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle L. Cullen: A Field Guide to Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debut<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is a perfectly charming novel with enough quirky characters to make it a standout debut.\u00a0 Roughly following the \u201cThursday Murder Club\u201d scenario in which retirees in a closed community solve crimes, it features widower Harry Lancaster, who has recently suffered a hip injury. He\u2019s forced to temporarily hire a younger in-home caregiver, Emma, who, having burned out on critical care nursing, sees helping people like Harry as her next step.\u00a0 The setting is a small community of mostly retirees, and, with many hours to kill, Harry spends many of them looking out his large front window at the comings and goings in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

One day he gets a call from his neighbor Sue, who asks him to call 911 and utters the word \u201cpoison\u201d before the line goes dead. He and Emma race over to Sue\u2019s only to find her close to death on her kitchen floor. When she passes shortly thereafter, the police rule it an accident, but, unconvinced, the two of them pursue their own investigation, with Harry\u2019s sketchy neighbors and\u00a0 plenty of suspicious local activities providing more than enough fuel to keep the sleuthing humming.<\/p>\n

The introduction of the nicely varied group of neighbors serves also to introduce and deepen their personalities and traits, every single one becoming vivid to the reader,\u00a0 no small accomplishment with such a large cast. We get to know the churchgoer, the Indian couple who worked in tech, the chef\/artist, the philanderer, and the inappropriate couple.\u00a0 The only thing they have in common is that none of them seemed to have liked Sue, who evidently had her nose in everyone\u2019s business, and not in a good way.<\/p>\n

When there\u2019s another shooting the detective in charge begins to take Harry and Emma\u2019s observations more a little more seriously, though he still begs them to butt out.\u00a0 It is no spoiler to say that they do not, but rather bring their own expertise to the table with even more enthusiasm.\u00a0 Emma is, of course, a trained nurse and Harry, a retired anthropologist who has worked with USAID and whose connections in Washington come in handy during their investigation, with the deep background he\u2019s able to obtain pushing the case ahead.<\/p>\n

Newbie author Cullen makes good use of traditional detective tropes including red herring(s) and pulls a good surprise ending out of her bag of tricks.\u00a0 Harry and Emma are also fleshed out as characters, managing to bring out the best in each other.\u00a0 Harry still mourns his recently deceased wife of 50 years but is beginning to think he should use the time he has left more constructively, while Emma is bound to an engagement she\u2019s not so sure of.<\/p>\n

This book brought to mind my first delighted reading of Charlotte MacLeod\u2019s classic Rest You Merry,<\/em> featuring my very favorite kind of sleuth, amateurs who utilize their own unique expertise to solve the case.\u00a0 Like MacLeod, Cullen seems to have a winning, gently humorous manner of telling a compelling story. This is a very strong first outing and I look forward to a long lived series, and happily a sequel entitled A Field Guide to Death and Deceit <\/em>is scheduled for September.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debut This is a perfectly charming novel with enough quirky characters to make it a standout debut.\u00a0 Roughly following the \u201cThursday Murder Club\u201d scenario in which retirees in a closed community solve crimes, it features widower Harry Lancaster, who has recently suffered a hip injury. He\u2019s forced to temporarily hire a younger in-home caregiver, Emma, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,4],"tags":[2374,328,943,1218,2375,1276],"class_list":["post-6858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-in-series","category-reviews","tag-a-field-guide-to-murder","tag-cozy","tag-crooked-lane-books","tag-debut","tag-michelle-l-cullen","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6868,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions\/6868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}