Lessons in Temptation, by Charlie Cochrane - Cambridge Fellows Mystery

Lessons in Temptation

Charlie Cochrane

Cambridge Fellows Mystery #5

What can i say?  It's Jonty and orlando.  They are wonderful, the book is bound to be too.  And in this volume we finally get to see orlando get over himself and get with the program.

Our two darlings are on a working holiday in Bath, Orlando to look at some old mathematics materials to see if they are worth the college purchasing, and Jonty to work on his first book, a work on Shakespeare's sonnets.  Of course it does not take long for a murder mystery to crop up.  In this case it is the 25 year old murder of a prostitute.  It seems the tone-y bath house.. and remember we are talking about Bath here...  went through a scandalous period when the owner was away, hosting orgiastic mixed gender parties.  During or after one of these, said prostitute was found dead.  The authorities, because some prominent and even titled men were involved, hushed it all up.  The owner always felt he had let the poor girl down, so our darlings take up the challenge.

Surprisingly, Orlando and Jonty are able to find some of the pricipals in the case, and slowly but surely they arrive at a solution to the whodunnit and why.  Now, here's where it gets strange.  They work on the case mostly separately.  That is because, i n part, Jonty has run into the 1907 equivalent of Brad Pitt., and American actor who turns his head.  Jonty feels terrible that he would even consider another man but Orlando, and Orlando dearly wants to punch "Mr. Smarmypants" in the nose.  Said Mr. Smarmypants does get punched, but that's as much as I am going to say about it.

Of course, I loved this book.  That goes without saying.  i adore these two fellows.  The mystery is pretty neat and Miss peters shows up so that's good too.  I wanted to smack Jonty, as the author would put it, for thinking he would be that easy of prey for the actor, but Orlando's reactions are so charming it was worth it.

OK, there were a couple things I thought lacking in this novel.  One is that one suspect I thought of immediately doesn't even get a look by our brainy sweethearts.  that is, the guy who minded the baths while the owner was away.  It just seemed to me his n ame should have come up.  The other is just that this volume in the series was altogether too short.  I wanted at least another forty pages of Orlando and Jonty.

The novel is the usual, an affectionate look at the couple, full of hilarious remarks, satisfying love scenes, but a thin mystery.  I dread #8 so I am glad I still have #s 6 and 7 as a buffer.