I really enjoyed the school setting of the book, and finding out what it is like behind the scenes there. I loved the first book in this series so naturally I was very excited about the second one, and boy it didn’t disappoint in any way. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This second book featuring three nosy retired Yorkshire schoolteachers doesn’t focus on solving a murder, but other insidious drama—someone is sending nasty messages to the staff at their old school.

A new head teacher was appointed to run the three friends' former school, and both Thelma and Liz soon find out that there are issues there.Much of the book is spent describing the friends' too many home responsibilities and worries about their husbands and the men's jobs, so the book took longer to take off for me. The staff there have been receiving poison pen letters and the ladies have to work hard to solve the mystery. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Retired schoolteachers Liz, Pat and Thelma are back at their usual table at the Thirsk Garden Centre café with a brand-new mystery to solve? Each of them is dealing with their own problems and, instead of sharing them as they usually do, they are keeping things close to their various chests, placing a strain on their relationships.

I don’t feel it works particularly well as a standalone book as there are a lot of references to the first book, A Spoonful of Murder, so it helps to have read that book first. This makes a great light mystery read for fans of the cosy genre and those formerly or currently employed in the UK education system will find plenty familiar within these pages! Hall’s own knowledge of and experiences as a deputy head in a primary school seamlessly emanated throughout and this really added another level to this book. The plot, the characters, the community he’s created is so 3-dimensional and real that I find myself utterly immersed in the story he creates.The only thing that stood out was the anger coming through the words about the way schools are being turned into, and run as, businesses.