Loved being back with Fran and Adam in the second book in the series. This time Fran is working for the upper crust and they and their guests won't let her or Adam forget where they are on in the pecking order. But when the master of the estate is murdered, the paying field is someway leveled when Fran becomes the prime suspect.

Now Fran and Adam might have solved one murder but that doesn't make them genius sleuths.. or so they keep telling themselves. But if the right killer is going to be locked away it will take their out-of-the-box thinking to get it done.

Thank you to the author, Bookouture, and NetGalley for the ability to read an advanced copy.

please don’t worry if you’ve not read the first book in this series as Death At The Dinner Party can be read as a stand alone because the lovely author tells you all about what happened in the first book (Death By Candlelight) so you feel like you know what’s what and who’s who.

Welcome back Adam & Eve! This duo are just so perfect to solve mystery’s together even though they’re complete opposites in almost every way, it’s another high class client that Fran (Eve) is catering for and she brings Adam along to help for the weekend and all is going well until someone ends up dead.

I enjoyed every second of this story it’s full of twists and revelations you really don’t see coming at all, Fran & Adam are so endearing together you feel like you are solving the crime together with them!

theft, catering, law-enforcement, murder, murder-investigation, closed-circle-mystery, cosy-mystery, amateur-sleuth, country-house, friendship, computer-game-developer, housekeeper, wealthy, mysteries, secrets, England, rural, verbal-humor, menus, situational-humor*****

Catering to the ostentatious rich can be murder. Frann Eve and her friend's son Adam are embroiled in a murder for the second time in their cooperative association. Fran is there to cater for a couple of days and Adam is there for research in the process of computer game development but brought along his lock picks and tiny gadgets anyway. When the body is found Fran notifies the DCI who believed her last time and they began their parallel investigations. Including the theft of a valuable painting! Loved this fairly lighthearted whodunit!
I requested and received a digital ARC of this book from Bookouture via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

This is an all right cozy mystery. It isn't really spectacular but it wasn't bad.

The one thing I'd change is to stop having the main character comment internally about how much she's eating or worry about her weight so much. Most EVERY female character have that problem? It's exhausting.

Well written solid mystery with rich characters you will love. Fran is a caterer with a love for finding out who knocked off the host of the party. Will keep you entertained. Good book!! Thanks #netgalley and #Bookouture for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.

So this is the second book in this exciting new series and just like the first one I loved it!

Reminiscent of a modern day Miss Marple & Jessica Fletcher. Adam & Eve have developed an unlikely partnership and under the guise of Eves catering business there detective skills come to life as they are thrown into the clutches of another murder investigator (nothing like some amateur sleuthing in my opinion) Great to see the character development and relationship between Eve & Adam developing.

A cracking entertaining read!

This is the second book in the series based around characters Francesca Eve and Adam Smith. In Death at the Dinner Party, Fran takes her private catering business to a country house party, where she is intended to supply top quality meals and snacks for the guests for a couple of days. Of course a murder occurs and she is obliged to stay on with the guests while the police begin their investigations.

Fran is the kind of person who cannot leave a good mystery alone, plus she does not believe the police are looking at the right suspects. Adam tends to encourage her in her investigations and uses his superior computer skills to help out. They work well together with support from some of the other staff and chase rumours and red herrings until they have worked things out.

I especially liked the way the author wrote the book, using Fran's interview with the police to drop back into the past as Fran recalls the lead up to events. It was a great method to use, filling in back story but still staying in the present. Hard to describe but it really worked.

I found this an enjoyable and entertaining read. The main characters are nice, there is a good story, and the author puts it all together well. Another series added to my list!

In this the second book in the series Fran has been hired to cater for a high class weekend, with Adam coming along to help but also to give him some insight into luxury houses for a computer game he is planning. Things go well until a body is found in the library.
I haven't read the first book in this series, it had been sitting in my TBR list but I haven't managed to get around to reading it yet. This didn't affect my enjoyment of the book though, but I will have to go back and read it. I did like the pairing of Fran and Adam, the actual hosts and guests did sound like the type of people I'd struggle to get along with as well. Add a world-weary police Inspector, clues that kept me guessing and this made a good cosy mystery.
I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, however this did not influence my review of the book.

Francesca Eve, caterer extraordinaire, has come to Claremont House to work for the cream of society. A full breakfast spread? Simple. A glorious picnic lunch? Easy as pie. But a dead body for dinner was definitely not on the menu…

No sooner has Francesca Eve turned up for a jam-packed weekend of gourmet catering at a posh country house than she realises how challenging this event is set to be. Not only are the hosts wealthy – and demanding – beyond her wildest dreams, but each of the guests is more difficult than the last. But she never expected the host to turn up dead…

Suspicion falls on everyone in the house – could there be a murderer in their midst? Is the incredibly glamorous, and now extremely rich, widow really as upset as she’s making out? What secret is the housekeeper hiding? Whose money troubles are now forgotten? As the only person without a motive, Fran’s intimate knowledge of the house party puts her in the prime position to help the police.

As rumours swirl and guests’ pasts come to light, someone else is found dead. But when the police arrest their chief suspect, Fran becomes convinced they have the wrong person – the evidence is almost too neat to be true. So she decides to strike out alone, in the country house where the killer is still staying… Someone has killed twice to keep their secret safe. Will Fran be able to unmask them, or will this weekend turn out to be her deadliest job ever?

This was a really fast-paced and easy read. I enjoyed Fran's attitude with all of the guests and how she interacted with them. I also liked being able to follow along with her on trying to uncover the information.

This book was great, the characters were well developed. The plot was interesting. Highly recommend it.

Francesca Eve, Fran to her friends, is a private caterer. Weddings, dinner parties, and cupcakes a speciality along with a knack for being in close proximity to the recently deceased! Adam Smith, video designer, chief bottle washer, and moral support, has the same knack but lightening couldn't strike twice could it?

Claremont House is a country residence of some magnitude and home to Keith Chapman, his wife, Mimi, and their staff, Rachel and Derek. At least it is on Fran's arrival, unfortunately by the time she is getting ready to leave one of them is permanently indisposed! Fran calls Detective Chief Inspector Helen Bradley, Nell to her friends, and after her swift arrival, the discovery that Fran was possibly the last person to see the victim alive unsettles everyone.

This is the second in the Adam and Eve Mystery Series and was another excursion into the lives of Fran's rich and privileged clientele. Once again the easy writing style meant the storyline flowed from the start with familiar characters from the first book.

I wanted to like this as it is a new series with the potential of seeing an original partnership evolve especially as I am a big cosy crime fan but unfortunately I found it stretched even its fictional reality a little too far. I have no idea if the technology used by Adam is available but I'm pretty sure, used as it was here, it would be inadmissible in court even with someone eavesdropping nearby.

Without spoilers I can't comment on the ending other than to say I found it unrealistic as I do the friendship between the two main protagonists. At least there is no likelihood of a romantic entanglement between them.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the opinions expressed are my own. Unfortunately I can't recommend this unreservedly but if you want to suspend reality for a while you might enjoy it.

Someone has murdered Keith Chapman, the host of the house party Fran has been hired to cater. Luckily, she's got Adam, her friend's son who is also a computer whiz, with her and they, together with their friend DCI Nell Bradley work their way through the various people at the estate who have a reason to want the victim gone. It's a nice cozy mystery with heavy Christie overtones (not an issue, just saying). I missed the first book but that wasn't an impediment to enjoying this one. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

This is the second book of the Adam and Eve Mystery Series. I liked it better than the first! The characters are great, especially Adam and Eve. This is a funny cozy mystery that will keep you entertained throughout.

This is a great series, and this second book was as good was the first.
Eve is hired to cater a weekend party, and takes Adam along to help her. The hosts are very rich and are trying to decide who they should let invest in their next project. But things don't go the way they were planned when Mr. Chapman, the host, is found deceased in his study. Of course Eve and Adam call their old "friend" and Police Detective, Nell, but they can't help snooping and investigating on their own. There are a lot of suspects, a lot of motives, and many odd behaviors. Eve and Adam are very clever in their "detective" skills.
Absolutely love the characters, even the new ones we meet in this book. The plot was great, read smoothly and kept me wanting to see how things ended. For the most part the end was predictable, but getting there was a lot of good reading. Highly recommend the book and series.
I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A wonderfully cosy murder mystery, the second in a series from the author. Very much enjoyed it, the characters are drawn beautifully and the plot is well-paced and devleoped.

I had such a good time with Fran & Adam! This read like a very gentle, updated Christie novel with the country home setting and the characters. First book in this series for me, but Fran and Adam were fun to follow along as they solved the mystery. I greatly enjoyed that our duo actually sleuthed and solved the mystery, as opposed to just stumbling into the answer.

I really enjoyed this book. It started off a bit slow, but I understood it was to go behind the scenes and into the pasts of the characters. Once it picked up, it was very compelling!

Francesca Eve is a caterer who has been hired to cater for a swanky weekend party hosted by Mimi and Keith Chapman at their country home, Claremont House. Invited to the weekend are a number of Keith's potential investors in a new property development. The weekend is clearly designed to impress the potential investors with Keith's wealth, and no expense has been spared. Fran has brought along her friend's son Adam, a computer games designer, who wants to study the country house set up for a game he is designing.

Hosts and guests are almost universally unpleasant, the only nice people seem to be the resident gardener/handyman Derek and the housekeeper Rachel. Then Rachel and Fran find Keith dead in his study, which has been trashed and a valuable painting has been stolen.

Fran calls her old acquaintance DCI Nell Bradley (who apparently investigated Adam's mother as a potential murderer in the first book in the series) to investigate the scene, but when suspicion falls on Fran as the last person to see Keith alive, Adam determines to do some investigating of his own.

This was a pleasant enough country house whodunnit (without the aristocracy) but it relied heavily on the hosts and guests speaking freely in front of Fran and Adam, while I understand that they might be overlooked as 'staff', I didn't get the impression that any of the guests had that level of wealth. Also, this was generally recounted in conversation between Adam and Fran or between Fran and Nell so the reader didn't 'see' the interaction, only heard about it when it was discussed later. It was all telling and very little showing.

The discovery of the murderer, in fact pretty much all of the discoveries relied upon Adam's illegal hacking/spying skills. Now I get he designs computer games but some of the bugging and hacking he did stretched the realms of credibility, also he seemed to avoid inputting a password into a laptop at one point by restarting the computer and logging himself in as the Administrator - pretty sure that's not how it works.

Overall, the plot relied too much upon people just happening to 'see', 'hear', 'notice', or be in the right place at the right time. No forensic evidence, an arrest based on no evidence whatsoever, and two amateurs obtaining evidence in ways that would be laughed out of court. A fun read but I can't see this as a long series, particularly since I doubt many people would hire a caterer who has a habit of finding dead bodies.

Don't even get me started on the ending!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Enjoyed this second book of the series much more than the first. Looking forward to more adventures of the unlikely team of Adam and Eve.

Death at the dinner party is book 2 to death by candlelight Francesca ‘fran’ eve has a catering business goes to Claremont house to work when Keith chapman the man of the house is murdered eve and Adam smith her sleuthing sidekick will they find out who murdered mr chapman before someone else gets murdered
A really good read and enjoyed the story and characters if you love a good sleuth book you will definitely enjoy this book
Thank you netGalley and thank you Bookouture and emma Davies for a really enjoyable mystery read