Jane Darrowfield Professional Busybody
Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she’s already traveled and planted a garden. She’s organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she finds something to do.
After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her bridge club and then around West Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she’s the go-to girl for situations that need discreet fixing. Soon she has her first paid assignment, and the director of a 55-and-over condo community needs her to de-escalate hostilities among the residents. As Jane discovers after moving in for her undercover assignment, the mature set can be as immature as any high schoolers, and war is breaking out between cliques.
It seems she might make some progress until one of the aging “popular kids” are bludgeoned to death with a golf club. And though the automatic sprinklers have washed away much of the evidence, Jane’s on course to find the killer.
Series: Jane Darrowfield Mysteries – Book #1
Author: Barbara Ross
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Kensington Books
Page Count: 266
Rating: 
Barbara Ross’ new cozy series “Jane Darrowfield Mysteries” from Kensington Books brings the old-fashioned busybody to life. From the nosy neighbor to the cat lady, the busybody is a staple of most small towns. Readers will relate to Jane Darrowfield in ways that will bring childhood memories to life. Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody, delights, amuses and keeps the reader turning the page.
Jane is retired, estranged from her son, and bored. She has spent most of her retirement so far gardening, clearing out old photos, and traveling. She isn’t sure what else to do with her time. When she gets put into the middle of her friends’ personal situations, she helps in the only way she can, by sticking her nose smack dab in the middle of everything. This leads to other friends asking her to help with their personal issues. Then she receives an offer from someone for her help with pay. Seeing no harm in checking it out, Jane finds herself getting involved in a murder. Not exactly something a woman of her age should be doing, but she is intrigued and can’t seem to stop herself.
Jane is a brilliant cozy series character. She is the busybody next door, the local gossip, the person who sticks their nose in even though they weren’t asked. She is also someone readers will love and cheer on as she gets closer to finding the killer. In this cozy series, Jane is an older hero who has lived a life with ups and downs, just as readers have. Her age reminds us that life doesn’t end when we retire, and neither do hopes, dreams, love, jealousy, or hate.
Other characters are equally interesting, many of which we hope will be returning in book two. Jane’s new boyfriend, Harry, and her friends Phyllis, Irma, and Helen add enthusiasm and excitement to situations and give Jane’s character complexity. Their interactions are fraught with what readers happily know will be trouble for Jane. The killer and the victim have good and bad aspects; they are neither one nor the other and make the perfect focus for this book. This cozy series will place the protagonist and the reader in a world they can be happy temporarily living in at the same time and will age with perfection.
I am happy to recommend the first book, Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody, and this cozy series to fans of who-dun-it’s of all types. Readers who enjoy older sleuths and well-written plots may also enjoy Sally Goldenbaum’s delightful “Queen Bees Quilt Shop” series or Jane Willan’s cozy series “A Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mystery.”
About the Author:
Barbara Ross is the author of seven Maine Clambake Mysteries. The eighth, Sealed Off, will be released in December 2019. A new anthology, Haunted House Murder, will be released in August 2019. Barbara’s latest, a new, non-Clambake mystery, Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody, will be released in June 2019.
Barbara’s books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers and the Wicked Authors. Her first mystery novel, The Death of an Ambitious Woman, was published by Five Star/Gale/Cengage in August 2010. In her former life, Barbara was a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of two successful start-ups in educational technology. She and her husband live in Portland, Maine.
Contact Barbara: 
Find Barbara on Social Media:
Contact The Cozy Review
Leave a Reply