They Did It with Love

After Sophie's father died and left her a huge estate, Sophie and her husband decided to move from Manhattan to Greenish, Conn. In order to fit in, Sophie joins a neighborhood mystery bookclub. The book twists and turns around the 5 women and their husbands who are in the bookclub. After a couple of bookclub meetings, one of the women is found dead. Initially thought to be suicide, it soon becomes clear they were dealing with a Homocide. Alex, the husband of the dead women was the only suspect, but claimed adamantly he was innocent. Sofie, who had owned a mystery bookstore in New York, was known as an amateur sleuth and contacted by Alex to help prove he was innocent. Sophie plays detective, and works with the "real" detectives who are trying to prove Alex's guilt. Suspecions raise, and skeletons are brought out closets of these couples. The author did an excellent job of keeping the readers attention while intertwining the lives of the 10 people involved. Readers see inside the lives of the "rich and non-famous," and are given a surprised ending. I belive this book would be enjoyable for both men and women, and was a wonderful read for our bookclub. It is multi-layered which helped the discussion flow.

Wow, this book was a surprise. An homage to Agatha Christie, the heroine of this novel is a smart serious Agatha Christie lover who stumbles into her own murder mystery. One of Agatha Christie's most amazing skills was painting rich characters w/o revealing their inner secrets. Arguably, her uncanny ability to never fully show her hand w/o the reader guessing was the key to her ability to constantly produce astounding endings. Kate Morgenroth has accomplished the same feat here. My only wish was that the book had not been set among the wealthy elite in Greenwich. That aspect of the book was somewhat distracting for me although other readers might appreciate the luxurious setting. Apart from being a mystery it was also very entertaining and not heavy at all. A perfect weekend read.

This was a very well written and compelling novel. The characters were amusing and engaging and the plot moved forward at a nice clip. It's the first "page turner" I have read in awhile. Plus a surprise ending.....Definitely recommend!

After having waded through a couple of "heavy" reads, I was ready for something light and fun. This book was perfect! It's light and fun, yet still smart. I love the author's style of writing, and of breaking up the chapters. It makes for a very fast read. I plan to look for other Morgenroth books.

Members of the Mystery Book Club have to be invited to join by Priscilla Brenner, the group leader and perennial hostess. The other women in the group, Susan, Ashley, Julia and Sofie, are all her neighbors in up-scale Greenwich, Connecticut, a New York City suburb. These women met monthly and were reading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mystery series. Then suddenly they are the subjects of their own real life mystery-a murder in their own neighborhood. Kate Morgenroth has created a thoroughly enjoyable group of women and spouses to populate her book. They are just clichéd enough to feed into stereotypes and then turn out to be something a bit different from the expected. I felt that they were very well drawn and their secrets tended to be a surprise. While it is nearly impossible to decide which characters are lying-and why-as the plot unfolds, the details do seem to hold up without completely stretching credibility. Since telling any more about the characters or plot might give the whole story away, I won't do that. I will say that I had a lot of trouble putting this one down to go to bed and to go to work. It is a delightful page-turner. Armchair Interviews says: This would be a fun book to discuss with a book group.