Thank you to Net Galley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Death in the Details by Katie Tietjen!

I enjoyed this first book in a new series about a war widow who uses her hobby of making miniatures to help her solve a murder in her small Vermont town. I'll likely continue in the series.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #CrookedLaneBooks for a free copy of #DeathInTheDetails by Katie Tietjen. All opinions are my own.

Maple starts building intricate dollhouses to support herself after her husband's death in WWII left her penniless. After one of her customers is found dead in his barn and ruled as a suicide, Maple is convinced otherwise. She recreates the crime scene in miniature form and it convinces a rookie police officer to enlist Maple's help in uncovering the victim's life.

I liked the twists and turns of this historical mystery. They kept me guessing for most of the book. The story is inspired by Frances Lee Glessner, who is known as the mother of forensic science. Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this eARC. Death in the Details is out now.

Death scenes and dollhouses!! Who knew the two could go together so nicely in a murder mystery. In this story, Maple uses her unique ability as a tool to help solve a local murder in her small Vermont town. Using her photographic memory and the miniature that she is able to create of the crime scene she witnessed, Maple is able to assist with the local investigation, provide justice, and wrap things up in a tidy “nutshell.”

I’m so happy to have had the chance to read the Advanced Reader’s Edition e-copy of “Death in the Details" by Katie Tietjen; thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books!

Based on the true story of Frances Glessner Lee, this mystery follows Maple who starts building dollhouses to support herself after her husband's death in WWII. When a man dies, she makes one of the crime scene, convinced he was murdered. The sheriff doesn't believe her, but Maple is not deterred and starts investigating.

This one started out slow, but I am so glad I stuck with it! I loved Maple and Kenny's tag team investigation, and thought the whodunit was surprising (in a good way). If you are finding it a little slow at the beginning, stick with it! It really picks up and once I was past ⅓ in, I had to know what happened next!

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Following the death of her husband Maple Bishop facing losing her home as well. So she does what she does best, creating detailed dollhouses. The only problem is, her first customer turns up dead under mysterious circumstances. Well at least Maple considers them mysterious. When it's quite clear that the police don't see things the same way she does, she decides to create the crime scene in exactly detail.... because Death is the Details.

Book Review: Death in the Details by Katie Tietjen

Rating: 3.5 Stars

As I delved into "Death in the Details" by Katie Tietjen, I found myself immersed in post-WWII Vermont alongside the determined Maple Bishop. Inspired by Frances Glessner Lee, the mother of forensic science, Maple takes on the role of a sleuth with a knack for intricate dollhouse crafting. The story kicks off with Maple's world turned upside down after discovering her husband's bad financial choices, leaving her on the brink of losing her home.

The narrative unfolds swiftly as Maple's dollhouse business leads her to a shocking discovery - a customer found dead in his barn. Driven by a keen eye for detail and a desire for justice, Maple delves into the dark secrets lurking beneath the town's surface, with the help of rookie officer Kenny. The plot twists and turns as Maple recreates crime scenes in miniature form, unraveling a web of deceit and danger that hits close to home.

Tietjen's writing skillfully captures the essence of post-war struggles and small-town intrigue, painting a vivid picture of a community hiding more than meets the eye. The pacing of the mystery keeps readers engaged, with well-plotted twists that keep you guessing until the end. The setting is richly detailed, immersing readers in a bygone era with a touch of macabre charm.

While the book excels in many aspects, particularly in its historical detail and plot intricacies, where it falters slightly is in the characterization of Maple Bishop. As the protagonist, Maple falls short of being truly likable, which may hinder some readers' connection to her journey. In a cozy mystery setting, a relatable main character is key to drawing readers in fully.

Overall, "Death in the Details" is a solid debut that blends history, mystery, and a touch of darkness into an engaging read. Despite Maple's shortcomings as a character, the well-crafted plot and atmospheric setting make this a promising start to what could be an intriguing series. I look forward to seeing how Maple's journey unfolds in future installments and recommend this book to fans of historical mysteries looking for a unique twist.

⚠️This review was written based on personal opinions and experiences with the book. Individual preferences may vary⚠️

Left penniless after her physician husband dies in France during WWII, Maple Bishop knows she must find work fast. Though trained as a lawyer, the lawyers in the small Vermont town of Elderberry that she lives in refuses to hire her because they’re unable to see past her gender.

Maple decides that she’ll transform her hobby into a job, and begins selling her highly detailed and beautifully constructed dollhouses.

After a local farmer dies, and his suicide is ruled as an accident, Maple is unconvinced. Using her experience creating miniatures, she meticulously recreates the death scene. This recreation convinces a junior, young police officer to ask for Maple's help in looking more deeply into the life of the dead man.

This was such a fun read. The pacing is great, with plenty of information delivered about Maple's circumstances and the inhabitants of the town well without overwhelming the narrative.

Maple is likeable and is not skilled at creating or maintaining friendly relationships. Not only is she an outsider in Elderberry (because her family has not been resident for generations—I have had the same experience when I lived in a small town for some years), but because she did not kowtow to the local gossip and her cronies, found herself frozen out of even the possibility of many friendships. Also, Maple is abrupt in her manner, and not interested in making her intelligence palatable to anyone who thinks women should smile and be polite, and not voice definite opinions.

I liked how the author's fascination with the real-life Frances Lee Glessner and her nutshells, miniatures of crime scenes, inspired this story's protagonist. The other details the author includes, including the continued rationing even post-war, played such a big part of this entertaining story.

I dearly hope to read more of Maple's exploits in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Crooked Lane Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Death In The Details is the first novel by American author, Katie Tietjen. It’s October 1946 and, eight weeks after losing the husband who volunteered as a doctor in France, Maple Bishop learns that, despite the Government life insurance cheque, she is virtually penniless. And she may be the first woman to graduate from the Boston City Law School, but in Elderberry, Vermont, no-one will employ her in that capacity. If she doesn’t make the soon-due mortgage payment, she’ll be homeless.

Her one solace is making her miniatures: fully fitted, furnished and populated dollhouses. She has quite a lot of them, but can’t resist making more. When she’s at Ben Crenshaw’s hardware store picking up bits and pieces for a new one, he makes a suggestion that might benefit them both: display her houses in his window, and set up a work table in the store so customers can watch them being made. Maple’s rejection of the gossipy sewing group led by Elderberry’s self-appointed social chair, Ginger Comstock, makes her an outsider just as Ben's mixed race does.

When delivering one of her finished works, Maple stumbles on a grisly scene: the much-disliked husband of Angela Wallace is hanging from a noose in his barn, quite dead. She goes into the deserted house to call the Sheriff, but back in the barn, takes in various odd details. Maple is shocked when the Sheriff deems it a suicide not requiring investigation, and her troubled mind won’t rest until she has rendered each detail her photographic memory recorded into a miniature death scene complete with victim.

Not only does the Sheriff dismiss her ideas, he throws her out of the station. But when officer-in-training, Kenny Quirk returns her “death scene in a nutshell” he wants her to join him in a covert investigation. Perhaps not the wisest move, but his intentions are pure, and Maple finds it difficult to resist…

Tietjen offers an original plot with several twists and turns to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning right up to the exciting climax. She renders her setting and era well, deftly illustrating some of the hardships faced by communities in the early post-war years.

Her protagonist is a gutsy, no-nonsense woman describe by one friend as hard to like. She admits to using vinegar when honey would work better in interpersonal relations, finds people exhausting, prefers her stray orange cat’s straightforwardness and emotional transparency.

The story is inspired by the real-life Frances Lee Glessner, who made crafted miniature crime scenes, and the Author’s Note makes interesting background reading. The blurb describes this as a series debut, and more of this cast is most definitely welcome. Excellent historical crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

I very much enjoyed this book. It’s a fresh take on historical mystery. I like the supporting characters, the actual writing, as well as the mystery.

Drawing inspiration from true crime and offering readers a smartly plotted puzzle of a mystery, Death in the Details is a stunning series debut. Set in the post-WWII era this was a really compelling historical mystery. This was quite the page-turner and kept me engaged until the very end.

Death in the Death is the debut mystery novel by Katie Tietjen. The author was inspired by the real life forensic pioneer Frances Lee Glessner who first used dioramas to solve crimes.

Maple Bishop has inherited a house in a small town in Vermont. She has recently been widowed as her husband died in the last days of WWII. Maple has an urgent need to make money fast. Since she is unable to find work as a lawyer since she is a woman, she turns to her hobby of making dollhouses to help herself. Along the way she meets a new sheriff’s deputy and the owner of the hardware store in town. While delivering one of her first commissions, she discovers the body of a local businessman hanging from the rafters of his barn. Maple feels compelled to find out why this crime happened.

I devoured this book in a few days. I loved the details about making doll houses and then crime scene boxes. In addition, any book set in Vermont captures my attention. I gave this book 5 stars and I look forward to reading more from this author. Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the free advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this was really well written and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I think it will find readers at our library, so we will definitely be purchasing for the collection.

Historical Mystery inspired by a real person? Count me in. I enjoyed reading this post-WWII story about a war widow struggling to work and live in Vermont. It was interesting to see how the main character, who didn't have success being hired by her profession turns on her hobby of doll house making. After one unfortunate event when she finds herself on a death scene, she recreates the barn scene in a miniature model, which helps her start working with a young deputy to find the truth.
What a fascinating story that kept me turning pages until the end. I'm looking forward to reading future books by this author.

Maple Bishop is trying very hard to deal with the loss of her husband Bill. It is post WWII and she now finds herself penniless, going to lose her home and lifestyle. She turns to her craft, the one she is good at - miniature dollhouses, till she discovers a dead body when she goes to deliver her first order.

Being the first on the scene she notices discrepancies in the way the body was hanging and though the doctor and sheriff both want to wrap it up as a suicide, Maple has her doubts right from the start and is frustrated when her efforts to start an investigation are stalled. The sheriff does not want his upcoming retirement disturbed and the doctor, who is an old hand is in Maples opinion a very straight and honest man.

When she gets the support of the youngest recruit in the sheriffs office on her side, Maple starts a quiet investigation of her own, disrupting the life of several of its citizens and creating a furor wherever she goes. Undeterred Maple continues, bringing down corrupt government officials, baring a sugar racketeering scam and setting right many things including getting justice.

A rather vintage crime classic. Very pleasant reading.

Can we take a moment to admire the gorgeous cover of this book? Death In the Details by Katie Tietjen was inspired by a woman considered a pioneer in forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee. According the Wikipedia, she created the “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, 20 true crime scene dioramas recreated in minute detail at dollhouse scale, used for training homicide investigators.”

With that in mind, check out the plot of this novel:

Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple realizes she could lose her Vermont home next and sets out to make money the only way she knows how: by selling her intricately crafted dollhouses. Business is off to a good start—until Maple discovers her first customer dead, his body hanging precariously in his own barn.

Something about the supposed suicide rubs Maple the wrong way, but local authorities brush off her concerns. Determined to help them see “what’s big in what’s small,” Maple turns to what she knows best, painstakingly recreating the gruesome scene in miniature: death in a nutshell.

With the help of a rookie officer named Kenny, Maple uses her macabre miniature to dig into the dark undercurrents of her sleepy town, where everyone seems to have a secret—and a grudge. But when her nosy neighbor goes missing and she herself becomes a suspect, it’ll be up to Maple to find the devil in the details—and put him behind bars.

I love the premise of this book. I’m always looking for books with plots I haven’t seen before and this one gave me something new. I enjoyed it!

Out now.

WOW! It was a great historical mystery that made me met the mother of forensic science, read about how she worked. There's also a well plotted and solid mystery I thoroughly enjoyed
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for an advanced copy of Death in the Details.

This was such an interesting mystery. I loved the setting in Vermont just after WWII too. Knowing this has inspiration from a true crime this was a great debut!

Set immediately post WWII, this is a great start to a (probable) cozy mystery series! Inspired by Frances Glessner Lee's dollhouse crime scene dioramas, our main character, Maple, is a whip-smart, highly trained woman in a world that was trying to shove women back into the homemaker role. This tension echoes through the book and gives it a little bit of an edge that most cozies don't have. The mystery is pleasantly twisty and the characters are fun. I look forward to seeing more of Maple in the future.

The novel, apparently a debut and first in series, is narrated in third person, past tense, entirely from the point of view of one Maple Bishop. The first woman to graduate from law school in Boston, she and her husband Bill moved to the small town of Elderberry in Vermont; where he would take over as town doctor from the man through whom the two had met years before, and she would…be the town doctor’s wife.

This life is not the freedom Maple had worked so hard to earn, but it is the 1940s, and needs must: her mother is dead, her brother is dead, no one will hire a woman lawyer, and this is a way to leave the Boston slums where she grew up, and where she lost everyone she’d loved, behind.

Three years later, a recently widowed Maple is facing not just poverty again, but homelessness. Her law degree is useless in a town with one law firm and many misogynists, and after the payoff from Bill’s life insurance is swallowed by his debts, she finds hope in the one thing she’s devoted her focus and passion since moving to Vermont: she can sell some of the many dollhouses she has completed, and perhaps get enough custom orders to support herself.

Again not the stuff dreams are made off, but Maple needs to earn money in a hurry, she doesn’t have any other means of earning money, and people seem interested, so it’s a case of “little to lose. plenty to gain”.

That is, until she finds a body, and things spiral out of control with a quickness.

Beware: death of a sibling; death of a spouse; sexism; disability; racism; domestic violence; suicide; PTSD; copaganda.

The opening scene, where Maple learns of her precarious financial circumstances, is heartbreaking; the gleeful callousness of the same lawyers who had refused to hire her years before may be read as slightly cartoonish if one didn’t see it all around us in real life.

But this scene also starts developing Maple’s character as someone who is not just an outsider–the urban woman with professional aspirations who didn’t fit in the small town social circles she was expected to navigate–; not also someone who finds herself utterly alone in the world, having lost every person she has loved who loved her back; but also different from what women were expected to be and behave.

Whether the author meant to or not, several of Maple’s personality traits resemble ADHD and/or autism. She has a photographic memory, which has set her apart her entire life, at the same time that it helped with her studies and her escape from poverty; she also tends to hyperfocus to the exclusion of things like food or sleep. She feels things deeply and struggles to regulate her emotions; she often says exactly what she thinks or sees–leading her one friend to tell Maple that she’s “too honest”—which doesn’t make her the easiest person to like; and she has difficulty parsing and reacting appropriately to other people’s emotions.

“People were exhausting. It occurred to Maple that she had engaged in more interpersonal relations in the past week than she typically did in a month, and she longed for the solitude of her house, where her only company was the stray cat who required only food and the occasional pat.” (Chapter 19)

When the police are quick to declare the death either suicide or accident, Maple’s legal training and her photographic memory of the scene lead her to discard either as the truth, and she recreates the death scene as a miniature, in the hope that it will help her work out what actually happened.

Maple’s experiences with cops have never been what one would call the Mayberry’s Andy Griffith ideal. Instead, those encounters reflect the reality of what most people who actually come in contact with cops in “professional” settings experience: callousness towards victims and a generalized sense of aggressive disdain for “civilians”, especially those who are poor and/or marginalized by society–never mind the whole “protect and serve” bullshit.

So while it enrages her sense of justice, it is not a surprise when the sheriff essentially threatens her with jail if she makes waves over Elijah Wallace’s death: the man was hated by most of the town, he was a wife beater and a cattle killer, and they are all better off with him dead. On top of which, the death certificate signed by the medical examiner says it was an accidental death: case closed.

Things should end there; however, for reasons of his own, Deputy Ken Quirk pushes Maple to find out what actually happened. He is convinced that they can eventually convinced the sheriff to reopen the case.

“His eyes shone with the fervor of the optimistic and the unjaded. Had she ever looked like that? Had she ever felt that level of righteous conviction that justice would prevail? That people were inherently good?” (Chapter 9)

The events of the novel happen inside a week, and while there is an underlying feeling of tension and urgency the entire time, at the same time that the narrative seems to never hurry, somehow reflecting the slow pace of life one expects in a rural time in the middle of the 20th Century. Also, having donated her late husband’s car tires to the war effort years before, Maple walks everywhere; going back and forth between locations, to deliver her dollhouses, to have conversations with people, and so forth. In fact, she only uses a telephone twice in the book.

The small rural town setting is very convincing; there’s enough physicality to it–how long it takes Maple to walk from her to there, how the density of houses and the presence of businesses as opposed to fields and barns, etc. changes depending on where she goes, and so on–to make it tangible, and there’s enough regarding the social mores and class distinctions, including racism, to make it real.

Part of the sense of danger stems from seeing everything exclusively from Maple’s point of view, and she is acutely aware of how much of an outsider she is. She understands many of the most obvious rules of small towns, such as how her refusal to play the gossip game with wives’ leader Ginger Comstock made her an outcast of Elderberry’s ‘society’, but she’s acutely aware of how much she doesn’t know about the town, including long standing feuds, friendships, and other personal relationships, and how these intersect with the murder.

Then there’s the fact that she still needs to earn enough to support herself; she’s behind on the mortgage and facing eviction, and her new business venture depends entirely on the town’s good opinion of her–which she has already mostly lost.

One of the best parts about this book is that while Maple is quite certain of herself when it comes to facts, she’s constantly interrogating herself when it comes to her interpretation of those, allowing newly found information and evidence to change her mind, so that her theories fit the facts, rather than trying to force the facts to fit a preconceived conclusion.

“Uncoovering the truth didn’t always result in satisfaction or vindication. Often, it seemed to make the seeker more miserable, more jaded, than he’d been when he’d set out. And yet.” (Chapter 31)

This flexibility of mind extends to other aspects of Maple’s personality, in the form of a certain insecurity in how she relates to people–she does find them exhausting, because their behavior is always open to various interpretations, and finding which one is the truth (I.e., the intention behind expressions, words, and actions), is never straightforward for her.

When given an opportunity to given an interview for a “feel good/human interest” story, Maple isn’t sure whether she should take it and run, or not, and her internal struggle makes her not just relatable, but human.

“Angela Wallace had been impressed with Maple’s initiative, and so it seemed was the young reporter. But by leaning into her dollhouse making, was Maple truly making a name for herself as an independent business woman? or what she settling for what society expected and allowed for her?” (Chapter 21)

Most of the other characters are less well rendered, not because of a lack in the writing, but because they are all seen exclusively through Maple’s eye, and we’ve already established that she struggles with persona interactions. However, it’s worth mentioning how as she spends more time with both Kenny and Ben, the widowed, half-Japanese owner of the hardware store where Mabel displays and sells her dollhouses, she sees them more clearly over time, and so does the readers.

Aside: Ben is the only non-white character in the entire book; as the setting is Vermont (the second whitest U.S. state), this makes sense. It also makes sense that there’s quite a bit of passive-aggressive racism directed his way, not the least because of Japan’s role in WWII.

The other side of this is the inevitable creeping copaganda, as eventually Maple’s fact finding persuades even the callous sheriff to the truth.

I would not call this a fair play mystery; while most of the facts needed to solve the mystery are presented to the reader as Maple finds them out, there is a final key piece of information that reeks of Deus Ex Machina. Still, the climactic scene is quite thrilling, and the denouement after it is really very satisfying.

Maple grows a lot in the space of that eventful week, and learns to let go of some of the survival reflexes of her childhood and youth, as well as some of her grief, opening herself to more people in a way that feels organic and sustainable. There is even a hint of a potential romantic relationship with Ben, and Maple’s own social position in town is now secure, based entirely on merit and not on her marriage.

I really enjoyed Death in the Details, and hope that we see further novels about Maple and Elderberry. 8.50 out of 10.