cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, the Catskill Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane.
Delany is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It Crime Writing Festival. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. She is the recipient of the 2019 Derrick Murdoch Award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. Delany lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Delany applied the Page 69 Test to Tea with Jam & Dread, her newest Tea by the Sea mystery, with the following results:
From page 69:Visit Vicki Delany's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.Annabelle wasn’t prepared to leave without getting in one last shot. “That watercress is limp. Can’t you find anything fresher?”Tea with Jam and Dread passes the Page 69 Test easily. The book is a ‘culinary cozy’ and we can see from this short section that food is a large part of the book. The main character in the series, Lily Roberts, owns an afternoon tea restaurant, and the hints of the food being prepared here (watercress sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches) imply that afternoon tea is going to be served. Lily mentions that she once worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
The watercress looked fine to me.
“Feel free to hit the shops yourself,” Ian said. “But don’t bring the bill to me. I have what I need, all recorded and accounted for.” He turned back to his workbench.
“Carry on, everyone.” Annabelle sailed out of the kitchen, head high, heels pounding a furious rhythm on the floor.
I’d scarcely finished drying the watercress when the kitchen door swung open again. A young woman passing by with a bowl of hardboiled eggs to be shelled and made into egg sandwich mixture, yelped and jumped out of the way.
“Everything okay in here?” Emma asked.
“Out!” Ian yelled. “I’ve had enough. Out out out.”
Emma lifted her hands. She backed slowly away.
“One more person comes in here under the pretext of ‘just checking’, and I quit.”
I noticed two of the kitchen helpers exchange winks. Good chefs had the reputation of being temperamental, the head chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant I’d worked at in Manhattan came instantly to mind, but clearly Ian’s staff didn’t live in fear of him. He had, I thought, the right to be getting seriously annoyed. This party was a big event, and everyone wanted everything to go off smoothly.
The occasion is a 100th birthday party and although that isn’t stated it’s obvious they are preparing for a big event. Big enough that it requires the services of a chef, more than two kitchen helpers, and ‘me’. Whoever, me is, is not given in this page.
We see the beginnings of conflict. Ian, the chef, wants to get his work done, and everyone else (Annabelle and Emma are mentioned but it’s clear there are others) wants to ‘help’, by which they mean interfere. Conflict is the heart of any sort of literature, and particularly in a mystery novel. We see the characters clashing on page 69. Is this degree of conflict enough to end in a murder? Maybe, maybe not, but the seeds are set.
The Tea by the Sea series, of which Tea with Jam and Dread is the sixth, is set on Cape Cod. But in this book, Lily, her grandmother Rose, and several American friends have come to England for the 100 th birthday party of Elizabeth, the Dowager Countess of Frockmorton. The slightest hint that the book is set in the UK, or at least that the character of Ian is English, is when he refers to ‘the shops’ rather than ‘the store’.
I would prefer that the setting of the book was clearer, not only England but a historic manor house in Yorkshire, but other than that the Page 69 test is a success for Tea with Jam and Dread.
The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.
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The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.
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The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.
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The Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.
Writers Read: Vicki Delany.
--Marshal Zeringue
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