Teaberry Strangler is the 11th Indigo Tea Shop mystery from Laura Childs. I've read every one of her tea shop novels. I'm sorry to say it isn't one of my favorites. It's so-so. I mean, it's okay but not something I would want to read again nor buy. Theo, the owner of the Charleston-based tea shop and our heroine, witnesses a brutal murder of her friend and neighboring shop owner, Daria. It's up to Theo and her fellow tea shop cohorts, Drayton and Hayley, to figure out if the attack was directed to Daria or to Theo herself. As usual there are lots of extraneous asides like a walking tour of old Charleston homes and gardens, a variety of tea parties (including a children's tea), new teas, new products for her shop, daily menu changes, etc. In fact there are so many that the plot and the action are pushed to the side. Do we really need to delve into Theo's ex-boyfriend's ex-fiance and her nuttiness? How does this move the story along? I just wanted to scream, "Get on with it!" The killer isn't all that hard to figure out - I got it about half way through the novel. Theo doesn't figure it out. At all. Weird for Theo - she usually solves the mystery pretty efficiently. It seems to me that Childs spent so much time on the environment of the story that the story itself was forgotten or at best an afterthought. It was a disappointment.
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