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Hana
Keller and her mother and grandmother run Maggie’s Tea
House where, in addition to serving traditional tea services,
tea leaves are read. Grandmother Juliana reads the tea leaves,
and her special abilities bring more people to the tea shop
than the tea services do. Juliana’s readings are highly
accurate, but lately she has been seeing darkness and danger.
The readings have become sprinkled with Hungarian lore.
Ava Novák is in attendance at
an event for the Maygar Women group. She is drinking tea from
Hana’s special teacup, The Budapest Butterfly. As Hana
wonders how she got the rare cup, which was set up for display,
Ava looks ill and stumbles to the restroom. After giving the
woman a few minutes of privacy, Hana goes to look for her.
She finds her in the back hallway. She hadn’t even made
it into the ladies room. Ava is dead. She was murdered, and
a police investigation gets underway. Hana is determined to
find out who poisoned Ava and to save the tea house from closing
its doors for good.
Tea house and tea shop mysteries have
been around for a long time now. They are a staple of many
cozy mysteries. Julia Buckley has added her own unique characteristics
to this book by having Hungarian culture infused throughout.
I always love to find a new cozy series
and always hope for something new and special. Death in a
Budapest Butterfly is new and special and is an excellent
first book. I learned quite a bit about Hungarian legends
and traditions and hope that this is just the first of many
more to come.
There are Hungarian recipes at the
back of the book, which is an added bonus. I believe that
this would be an excellent book group selection and will appeal
to cozy readers from teens to seniors.
Reviewer
Notes: The author also writes The Writer’s Apprentice
Mysteries and The Undercover Dish Mysteries
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