Ron Benrey

A stand alone story, although it does follow right up where book one left off. And the same characters are in this story as the previous one, so I recommend book one first. If you like a good "whodunit" story and are a tea drinker, you are going to find a lot to like as you read. As one reviewer so well said, "You will drink in very last drop of this veddy English tea-based mystery".

Nigel Owen and Flick Adams are the director and curator of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum in England. As the museum digs up some bushes in the garden of the museum they discover a body, the body of Britain's most famous missing person, Etienne Makepeace (who is also considered a renowned 'Tea Sage'). Now it will be up to Nigel and Flick to figure out why he was buried at the museum and who at the museum had a part in this over 40 year old mystery.

The things they uncover about this man just keeps getting more and more interesting, the further along you read. I like how you try to solve this mystery right along with the characters in this story. It was quite interesting and fun and also a learning experience for me.… (més)

This is an "English, tea-based mystery" that lets you help solve the mystery as you read. It takes place in England and I wish the Royal Tunbridge Wells Museum was a real place, as it would be a place I would have loved to visit. You learn a lot about tea and since I enjoy a good 'cuppa' tea, this story was very interesting to me.

NIgel is a new acting director of a tea museum (even though he is a coffee man himself). Flick Adams is an American who is the tea curator, and who also knows a bit about forensic chemistry. When one of the board of trustees is found dead in the midst of a board meeting, most think it was a heart attack. But Flick knows the signs of poison and sets out to prove that Dame Elspeth did not die of a heart attack, but was poisoned. Nigel also has concerns as Elspeth had told Nigel before the meeting that she had found a thief on the board of trustees and was going to reveal who it was. This will cause Nigel and Flick to work together to uncover the mystery of who killed Elspeth and why.

Although it took me a good while to get into this story, once I did I enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on, just like Nigel and Flick were doing in the story. I also liked watching these two recognize and appreciate each other and start a little bit of a romance going between them. Tea lovers and mystery readers will enjoy!… (més)

"The Final Crumpet" is Book 2 in The Royal Tunbridge Wells Mystery Series by Ron and Janet Benrey. As I wasn't initially aware that the novel was part of a series, I enjoyed it as a stand-alone. The story is written in a delightful and charming narrative starring main characters: Nigel Owen, Managing Director, and Dr. Felicity (Flick) Adams, Chief Curator of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. The museum itself is artfully described as

"an imposing, four-story, Georgian-style building dedicated to the many different aspects of tea."

There is also a unique set of characters that add to Nigel and Flick's daily lives as well as the quaint atmosphere of the museum: Lapsang & Souchong (2 British Shorthair cats), Cha-Cha (a Shiba Inu dog) and Earl, an African Grey Parrot. The decision to replace 2 Assam tea plants in the tea garden at the end of the museum's 2-week shutdown discovers there has been murder and mayhem and threatens the museum's future.

With Nigel's wonderful British colloquial phrases and Flick's additions of speech, as she is originally a native of York, Pennsylvania, the story becomes an irresistible discovery not to be missed.… (més)