NO MALLETS INTENDED by Victoria Hamilton

"The fourth book of the Vintage Kitchen Mysteries is just as captivating as the first"

No Mallets Intended

Posted: June 9, 2015

In Victoria Hamilton's NO MALLETS INTENDED (Book four in the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series) Jaymie Leighton is making steady progress toward her goal of publishing a vintage cookbook when her job restoring a kitchen in the Queensville Historic Manor has her encountering danger and a dead body.

I have come to rely on Victoria Hamilton to provide charming, captivating books, ones that have a tendency to entice me into a different, small-town world filled with quirks and questions that keep me reading a bit longer into the night than I ought to. Her mysteries are very well-plotted, her characters appealingly vulnerable while still tough enough to stand up whatever comes their way (a difficult balance indeed).

NO MALLETS INTENDED is able to be read on it's own, but as you might expect, a richer experience is to be had if you start with the first book in the series and read on from there. As always after finishing a great cozy read like NO MALLETS INTENDED I am a bit dismayed that I need to wait for the next book in the series, but in the meantime I have Victoria Hamilton's newest brain child, The Merry Muffin Mysteries to engage me. Victoria Hamilton also writes the Teapot Collector series under the pseudonym Amanda Cooper.

Book Summary

The Queensville Heritage Society is restoring the once- grand Dumpe Manor. While Dumpe relatives and society members use the occasion to dust off old grudges, Jaymie Leighton prefers to adorn the kitchen with authentic Depression Era furnishings. A collection of vintage wooden mallets found in the house is a perfect addition to her display, but one also offers a late-night intruder the perfect weapon to knock Jaymie unconscious before escaping.

Though the attack has everyone on edge, nothing is missing from the house. Perhaps it was merely a vagrant who thought the place was still abandoned. But when Dumpe Manor’s resident historian is murdered with a mallet from the same collection, it’s time for Jaymie to turn up the heat on the investigation before someone else becomes history.