I really enjoyed this one! Really reminded me of And then there were none by Agatha Christie. I love this type of mystery novel.

Enjoyable read, although if you look too hard, the plot starts to have pretty big holes in it.

When I finished this book, my first thoughts were positive - I loved the Christie references, the characters were interesting enough, and the setting (being iced in!) was novel. But when I started thinking of how to approach this review, I realized, much like the average blockbuster Superhero action film, the plot was enjoyable, but there were parts that didn't make a lot of sense. <Mild Spoilers> The motive was odd; the killer didn't have an apparent motive until they tried to claim the inheritance which would then give them a huge motive. There were a lot of coincidences which gave the killer access to their victim. The way the point of view kept switching between two characters almost felt like a romance novel rather than a mystery; likewise the boyfriend seemed overly jealous like in a romance novel. Even elements of the plot seemed to come from a Christie novel (including some of protagonist's thoughts). <End Spoilers>

So at this point, I figured I'd better stop analyzing - I was destroying a book I'd previously enjoyed reading. My recommendation: read it, enjoy it, but don't think too hard about the plot!

The third in the Crime with the Classics series brings us 'Cyanide with Christie' - a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining murder mystery. A body in a bedroom causes consternation, suspected poisonings, eccentric characters and a nod from the writings of the Queen of Crime herself all combine to make an engaging read. Highly recommended - fans of the cosy mystery genre will be delighted with this.

Cyanide with Christie is a good cozy mystery with a slow start, but good writing. This is the third in the series, but it can be read as a standalone.

“Cyanide with Christie” earns 5/5 Karma Surprises…Clever and Engaging!

Marvelous! I love Katherine Bolger Hyde’s series: the writers’ retreat, a small town, renewed love, and fascinating connections to classic literature. It's Christmas, Windy Corners is festooned in all the holiday trim, and Emily is nervously anticipating her first guests arriving at the writers’ retreat. Luke Richards, renewed love and local police lieutenant, is still somewhat worried about strangers living in the house with Emily. Some unofficial background checks might be in order. The visiting authors range from well-known to new-to-the-scene, inspired to blocked, open book to quietly suspicious. One guest is flippant, critical, and well lubricated rubbing everyone the wrong way, but along with a winter storm, it's the uninvited guest, oddly penned Cruella Crime, that causes the most disruption. So, when she ends up dead…poisoned! Everyone is a suspect, including old-fashioned Karma!

Katherine uses a third-person narrative, not a favorite perspective for me, putting us on the outside looking in on the drama. However, with a clever mystery (the murder takes more time to occur than I prefer), well-developed characters (I literally cringed, though happily, at some), vivid descriptions (beautiful, stormy, and delicious), and entertaining banter (illustrates tone and personality well) she kept me totally engaged. I have become invested in Emily’s life as she enjoys a pseudo-motherly connection with her young employee Katie, navigates the renewed romance with Luke, struggles with what and who she wants in her future, and pines about the absence of blood relations including being childless. In Crime with the Classics, I am interested in all the literary references, ins and outs of running the writers’ retreat, and life in the Oregon area I, too, have spent vacations. Katherine has penned a well-paced, well-written, and engaging story that I highly recommend! The end? Agatha would be proud of the final “Oh, my!”

3.5 stars
CYANIDE WITH CHRISTIE is an enjoyable cozy mystery that pays homage to the great Agatha Christie. The author sets the stage for a locked room mystery with writer guests coming to town for protagonist Emily’s inaugural writers’ retreat over the Christmas holiday and encountering a debilitating winter storm that leaves everyone stranded amidst a killer. The victim is sufficiently wicked and unlikable, and the suspects, though a little over-the-top at times, are diverse and intriguing. I particularly enjoyed that, though everyone has a valid motive, Cruella Crime might or might not have even been the killer’s target.

Not having read the previous (two) books in the series, which I plan to remedy ASAP, I might be missing something in Emily and her love interest Luke’s back story, but Luke’s jealousy seems out of character for a more mature leading man. Also, I find it highly unbelievable that Emily, a professional woman in her fifties/early sixties, would eschew technology as she does here. These are small quibbles, though, and did not deter my enjoyment of the book.

I really liked CYANIDE WITH CHRISTIE and recommend it to any cozy mystery or Agatha Christie fan.

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley and voluntarily shared my thoughts here.

Princess Fuzzypants here: Emily finally has her writer’s retreat ready for guests and chooses the unlikely time of Christmas to invite strangers into her home. Some of her guests are delightful while others are not so. In fact, a couple are the guests from Hell but being a good hostess, she will not deny them the tradition of hospitality over the holidays. Sadly, she continues another tradition: one of her despicable guests is murdered on Christmas Day. There is a never ending list of people who will not mourn her death but poison, no matter how unpleasant she might be, is an extreme resolution.
As in a Christie mystery, there is a lot going on behind the scenes and very little is what is seems at first. In fact, despite the victim being totally reprehensible as the name Cruella suggests, perhaps she was not the intended victim. There is a distinct possibility Emily herself was the mark. Now the question becomes who would harm Emily and why would they wish her dead. While I twigged very early to the killer, the reason behind both the attempt and the murder was a big surprise.
It was an entertaining read and well deserving of four purrs and two paws up.

I found Emily an interesting protagonist. At a time when kick ass, feisty heroines with lethal fighting skills are thick on the ground, this bookish, hesitant, and rather timid lady was a refreshing change. Although she did at times come across as a throwback from another age, particularly in her rather inexplicable attitude to her hunky and adorably devout suitor. That said, I enjoyed the clash of personalities of the would-be writers cooped up at Windy Corner when a snowstorm cuts off their retreat. Under such circumstances, the shocker would be if a body didn’t turn up – and we are not disappointed.

While there are a number of red herrings, I did work out exactly what was going on well before the denouement. That said, I was never tempted to stop reading as I was drawn into the story and frankly by the end was more held by the characters than the fallout from the murder mystery. Overall, this was a pleasant change from my normal reading and I would happily get hold of another book from this author.

While I obtained an arc of Cyanide with Christie from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10

Cyanide wit Christie
By: Katherine Bolger Hyde
Published By: Severn House Publishers
Publication Date: March 1, 2019
3 Stars

It’s almost Christmas and Emily Cavanaugh is getting ready to welcome her first guests to Windy Corner, her Victorian home which she has recently converted into a writers’ retreat. An extremely fierce storm is headed to the area, and Emily hopes that all of her guests will be able to make it there before travel becomes too difficult. All of her guests eventually arrive safely except for one that backed out at the last moment. That space would not remain vacant long, for an unexpected visitor, Cruella Crime, shows up. Not only does Emily take an immediate dislike to her brash manner, but she is also dismayed at the tension she seems to cause the other guests. As much as Emily would like to show her the door, she knows she can’t turn her out in the middle of this storm. After several strained days, Christmas arrives and Emily hopes that everyone will be able to get into the spirit and enjoy the day. Those hopes are shattered when Cruella Crime is found dead in her room. All signs point to poison, and the atmosphere in the house turns even more uneasy as everyone tries to deal with the fact that a murderer is among them.

The premise of this book seems rather unoriginal. We have a college professor who inherits a house and decides to open up a writers’ retreat. I felt like this has been done before.

Having said that, I found the story itself to be very enjoyable. I adored all the references to Agatha Christie’s books. I also enjoyed the fact that we had a strong villain who becomes the victim as it adds a moral dilemma angle to the story. All of the suspects must wrestle with the thoughts of being glad the world is rid of such a toxic person, to whether or not she deserved to die. The other characters all help to round out the story. The author does a good job developing their storylines and bringing them to a satisfying close at the end. I think that readers of cozy mysteries and those that like books about books will enjoy this story.

Thanks to Net Galley and Severn House Publishers for an ARC of this book. #NetGalley #CyanideWithChristie

I had read and enjoyed the previous book in this series, Bloodstains with Bronte and the same holds true for Cyanide with Christie. Emily is a 50+year old professor of literature at a college in Oregon and thanks to a very large inheritance from her aunt, she is embarking on a dream come true - renovating and opening her large Victorian home as a writer's retreat. Christmas is coming and she is looking forward to the festivities. Her boyfriend, Luke, the local sheriff, is in attendance but investigating a murder is not what Emily and he had planned for Christmas. During a game of charades that's exactly what they get. Add to that they are snowed in along with a group of people who, it seems, each disliked the victim. Honestly, I disliked her, as well. However, the question then becomes - was she the intended victim? In classic locked room fashion, the investigation of the remaining guests gets underway. Can Emily and Luke unmask the killer before there are more bodies?
The pace starts a bit slow but it picks up and the mystery is very satisfying, full of twists, turns and red herrings. Just what a proper cozy mystery should have.
My thanks to the publisher Severn House and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

A nice cozy mystery, engaging and entertaining.
I liked the plot and the style of writing.
The characters were not always likable, heroine included, and this made somehow hard to care about what was going on.
The mystery was ok, no plot hole, and it kept me guessing.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for this ARC

Everything goes wrong with Emily's first set of guests at her newly restored B&B Windy Corner. She's taken a sabbatical from her position as a literature professor to get things up and running. Can someone really be named Cruella Crime? Well, she is and she's nasty and she ends up dead, thus setting off a sort of locked room mystery. Fans of Agatha Christie will probably argue various points but I haven't read a lot of Christie and enjoyed this for what it is- a cozy inspired by the master. Thanks to net galley for the ARC. Look forward to more.

A charming and engaging cozy mystery. The similarities and references to Agatha Christie's works add greatly to the tale. Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy via NetGalley.

Finally the renovations have been completed on the Victorian mansion that is Windy Corner. Now literature professor Emily Cavanaugh can organise her first writers' retreat over the Christmas and New Year period.
But death is never far away, but who will be the victim and who the guilty party among all the suspects.
An enjoyable enough cozy mystery though I could not take to the main character. Also some of the guests' characters seemed to be a bit over the top, and therefore obvious.

Cyanide With Christie is the third book in the Crime With the Classics series. I have had this series on my TBR list for some time, but just never seemed to start it. Once I saw the newest title was an homage to Agatha Christie (my favorite author for 40+ years), I finally got with the program and started reading. So glad I did! I really enjoyed this book!

Although the background theme of a relative inheriting a huge house and lots of money from a dead relative is a bit of a trope in cozy mysteries, I like what Katherine Bolger Hyde did with it. Her MC, Emily, inherits a large victorian home from her aunt, plus nearly unlimited funds....so she decides to turn Windy Corner into a writers retreat center. The house has six newly remodeled rooms all centered around a different classic author. Dickens. Christie. Montgomery. Forster. Austen. Bronte. Dostoevsky.

I wish Windy Corner was real! I would definitely go write there! And I would ask for the Christie room, of course!

I loved how the plot set up like a Christie novel. A group of people invited to a stately manor. Bad weather comes in to trap them there. An uninvited guest...or a surprise of some sort...reveals that one guest is hated by all the others. Hated guest dies horribly. Everyone is a suspect. Cool twisty ending nobody sees coming. Neat ending for everyone else involved. Loved it! Nice Christiesque feel with a modern edge.

I have the other two books in this series -- Arsenic With Austen and Bloodstains with Bronte -- on my TBR shelf. I'm definitely going to backtrack a bit and start with book one. I'm going to read this series through from the start. It isn't necessary to read the books in order....I jumped in at #3 and was able to figure things out...but I'd like to get all the character and background development from books one and two, then re-read this third book.

All in all, a well-written and enjoyable mystery! I'm definitely going to be reading more by this author. I like her writing style and her characters.

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Severn House via Netgalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

A slow start to this book, but worth persevering. A nice cosy who dunnit, just when I thought I knew who did do it, a twist and we have the real murderer.

I just couldn't get into this book. I had to give up halfway through. The characters weren't really all that likeable to me. Maybe I should've tried reading the first book in the series before this one, but I'm not sure that would've helped. The story was boring to me.

Cyanide with Christie by Katherine Boger Hyde reminded of a gothic mystery though set in modern times.

Ms. Hyde has set this modern gothic mystery at Emily's newly remodeled Victorian home called Windy Corners. During the evening's Christmas activities one of the guests is poisoned. It soon becomes clear that the woman who was murdered may not have been the intended victim. The plot was smoothly paced with several twists, characters that you "love to hate" and a snow and ice storm that strands every one at Windy Corners. Luckily Emily's gentleman friend, Luke, is also present. Being the sheriff of their small Oregon town, he's immediately on the job but it may not be enough. An engaging read for a couple of afternoons.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Severn House Publishers via NetGalley. All of the above opinions are my own.

Emily , a 50 something retired college professor has inherited a large and lovely Victorian home from her Aunt Beatrice. She has made renovations to enable her to host writers retreats. It is Christmas time and her first retreat. Authors start arriving and each has a back story. The first to arrive is young Oscar, an adjunct professor at Emily’s former school. Emily and Oscar really click, so much so that Luke, Emily’s boyfriend becomes a bit jealous. All of the writers are very pleasant with the exception of Dustin, a one bestseller wonder, and Cruella Crime, a paperback writer who has been dropped by her publisher. Cruella and Dustin are over the top awful people. As it is the holiday season, the guests decide to play charades. During the production Cruella is poisoned by cyanide. During the investigation it is revealed that all of the writers, except Oscar had a motive for killing her.
It’s a gentle mystery, no sex, violence, or bad language. The story is good and the characters are believable. I would recommend to cosy fans.
Thanks to netgalley and Severn House for an ARC for an honest review.

First book in the series I have read. However, I never felt lost and really enjoyed the mystery, the setting and the characters. The mystery kept me guessing until the end and I liked the who done it scene. I will definitely go looking for the first two in the series and look forward to more.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC I received in exchange for an honest review.