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A charitable Murder Fête at Mallowan Hall brings Agatha Christie’s housekeeper her second case. Hardly have real-life Detection Club authors G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Anthony Berkeley joined members of the fictional Listleigh Murder Club than Father Tooley, pastor of St. Wendreda’s Catholic Church, the financial beneficiary of the event, collapses in the Mallowan library. As the local authors competing for a publishing contract circle the murder scene, debating which poison could have killed him, Mallowan housekeeper Phyllida Bright takes it all in with a coolly appraising eye. When Inspector Cork arrives on the scene, solicitor Alastair Whittlesby, the overbearing president of the Listleigh, assures him that since the poison was slipped into the imported bitters that were a key ingredient of his favorite cocktail, he must have been the intended victim. The Mallowan cook is dumbfounded when she’s asked to limit her offerings to a “cold supper? After a murder?” A second poisoning considerably muddies the waters. So does Cork’s arrest of vicar Digby Billdop, whose Anglican church stands opposite St. Wendreda’s on the village green. Phyllida insists that even though the vicar was competing with Whittlesby for the publishing prize, he can’t possibly be guilty. But authors Mathilda Crowley and Louis Genevan and unpublished author Vera Rollingbroke are still likely candidates. The theft of an antique table and a fatal car crash produce new frissons but not clarification, which has to await the brain wave that allows Phyllida to summon all the suspects to the pleasingly extended denouement. Cambridge takes inspiration from several of Christie’s most celebrated novels in devising her agreeably intricate plot. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.