By
Samantha Silver

When Cassie Coburn moved to London, she never thought she’d be involved in a quadruple homicide.

After a car accident ended her medical career before it even started, Cassie moved to London on a whim, expecting to see the sights and live the typical tourist backpacker lifestyle.

Instead she finds herself accompanying a French private detective, Violet Despuis, as they attempt to find out who poisoned four people in the middle of London. Cassie’s life soon includes this crazy detective, an ancient landlady with a curious past, a mischievous orange cat who likes going for walks on a leash, and a super hot pathologist that Cassie is sure is out of her league.

And they haven’t even found the murderer yet…

In the prologue of this book, we learn that Cassie Coburn was a promising young surgeon before an accident took that all away from her.

In the first chapter Cassie tells us the extent of her injuries and the results of the lawsuit that followed her accident. Now she’s moved to London to hopefully find a new direction for her life.

She’s staying in a hostel and has been here just a week. One of the first things she did was purchase a secondhand bicycle. Which as she heads out for a meal she discovers has been stolen. She finds her way to the Edgewater Station of the Metropolitan Police to file a report. It’s here she meets a couple of interesting folks.

This is a favorite scene.

Coming toward me, was a man and woman who both seemed to be around my age. They couldn’t have possibly looked more different. He wore a fancy
suit, the dark blue of which went well with his light red hair and freckles that covered his friendly-looking face. Carrying a handful of files, he looked all business, but his face still had that kindness that made me think he was a good person. He was the type of policeman you wanted to see on the street, the kind of man that gave the impression that he would keep you safe, but also wouldn’t be overly aggressive if he caught you smoking a joint. She, on the other hand, had long, chestnut brown hair tied back into a ponytail, skinny jeans and a long boho top. A pair of huge sunglasses sat on top of her head, and she was wearing flip flops. Flip flops! She couldn’t have been a cop. Absolutely no way. But him? Definitely. It was worth a shot, anyway.“Excuse me?” I tried, going up to the two of them. The woman stopped and gave me a look as if she was surprised that I would dare interrupt them, but the look on his face was one of polite curiosity. I decided to address myself to him, and continued.“I was directed here to report a stolen bike, but I’m afraid I don’t know exactly who I should speak to. Could you help me?”

The man smiled, and the girl next to him smirked. “Of course. Listen, I can take care of this for you, why don’t you follow me into this room here?” he asked. He started walking to the left of where we were standing, where I saw a number of small conference rooms lining the wall.

“Seriously?” I heard the woman ask him. “You have got to be kidding me.” She had a French accent, and a strong one at that.

“We don’t pay you to help us out, you can always leave,” he told her.

“We both know you don’t have a chance in hell of solving this case if I do,” she replied, and I couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about.

“We have been known to solve cases before without your help.”

“Not ones like this.”

The man opened the door to one of the conference rooms and motioned for me to sit down at the desk. I did so, suddenly feeling like perhaps this had been a bad idea.

The conference room had a whiteboard against one side, with the chemical formula for strychnine, a poison, written on it. There was a small table in the middle, large enough to seat eight people, with that many chairs around it. I sat down at one and fiddled with my hands, and the man sat in one of the chairs on the other side. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit uncomfortable, like I’d wandered into something way bigger than a stolen bike, and that I maybe should have just sucked up the loss. After all, it sounded like there was serious police work being done here. The woman moved to the corner and stood there, watching us. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she was studying me, and it gave me the creeps. The weirdest part about it was that she didn’t hide it. She just straight up stared me down while the other guy took a notebook out of his pocket and began asking me questions.

“I’m DCI Tony Williams. Now, you said you had a missing bicycle? Where was it locked up?”

“Against a pole in an alley next to the hostel I was staying at,” I said, giving him all the details I had about the bike – the color, what I’d paid for it, that sort of thing.

“When did you see the bike last?”

“When I locked it up last night around six.”

He jotted the info down in his notebook and asked a few more questions.

“Right. Now I’ll just take down some basic information about you and we can be out of here.”

The woman interrupted then, her French accent somehow making her sound even more superior than her demeanour already was.

“She’s an American, recently moved to London. A doctor, but she doesn’t practice, probably because of the accident she was in. She grew up relatively poor, but has come into money recently. She has a bit of a desire to be adventurous, but her conservative upbringing has limited the amount of risk she’s willing to take.”

“Thank you, Violet,” DCI Williams said with a small smile, “but I was thinking more along the lines of her phone number.”

“Oh I know, I just wanted to see the look,” the girl named Violet replied with a small smile. I didn’t even need to ask what look she was talking about; I knew it was exactly the one I was doing now. My mouth hung open, my eyes wide, shocked that she knew all these things.

“How could you possibly know that?” Violet stepped out of the corner, a small smile on her face.

“Your accent gives away that you’re American. Your clothes are all American brands so you haven’t lived in London long enough to need to replace any of them. Plus, you came to the second floor rather than the third floor where you were directed, forgetting that we have a ground floor in Europe.”

My face flushed red as I realized she was right; I’d completely forgotten about the whole ground floor thing. But before I had a chance to be too embarrassed, she continued. “When you saw the formula written on the white board, you didn’t just look at it, you read it. So you’re trained in chemistry, but you don’t have the hands of a chemist; you’re actually wearing nail polish, and you don’t have any scars or traces of experiments gone wrong. So you’re a doctor. But you’ve been in an accident, it’s obvious from the way you walk that your left knee is out of joint, and when you were fiddling with your hands I noticed a slight delay in the reaction from your left hand as well. That says stroke, or accident. For a healthy looking young woman like you, the odds are in favor of an accident. An accident, in America, and traveling relatively soon afterwards? You sued and you won. But you grew up poor because despite the fact that I imagine you’re now incredibly well off, you still came to the police station to report a thirty-pound bike being stolen.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but my mouth dropped open even more.

“That’s incredible!” I practically whispered. If I wasn’t mistaken, Violet actually smiled.

“Most people accuse me of stalking them.”

“No. No, your logic, it’s perfect. It’s just…”

“No one thinks logically, so when I do it, it’s impressive.”

“Something like that. But how did you decide that I wish I was adventurous, but limit the risks I take?”

“You decided to move halfway around the world, which was an adventurous move on its own, but you also came to England, rather than going somewhere exotic. Adventurous, but you made sure to stay somewhere where the language is the same as yours and you’re not going to experience too much culture shock.”

“They would have burned you at the stake a couple hundred years ago.”

There was that small smile again. “Yes, it’s rather fortunate that we live in such an enlightened age. Although some of DCI Williams’ colleagues here would have preferred us to stay in the Middle Ages.”

DCI Williams shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, well, you help us find the serial killer, Violet, and I’ll make sure everyone knows it was all thanks to you.”

She waved him away. “You know I do not want the thanks. I simply see it as my civic duty to solve the crimes. It is simply because so many of your colleagues are imbéciles that I manage it so much better.”

DCI Williams stood up. “Thanks for coming in, Miss Coburn. Don’t worry about getting the wrong floor; I’ll make sure the right people get these notes. And sorry about…” he trailed off, his head tilting slightly toward Violet.

“Do you really think, Detective Chief Inspector Williams, that I do not know that you’re apologizing about me? Do you think so little of me that you think that’s fooling me?” Violet asked. “No matter. Take out the files, we can get on with the important stuff now,” she urged. I knew I should have been insulted at that, but somehow, I couldn’t be. This Violet, I didn’t know who she was, but she was different, that was for sure. I thanked them both and left the way I came, wondering about the strange Frenchwoman who seemed to know everything about me, while all I knew about her was her first name.
Silver, Samantha. Poison in Paddington (A Cozy Mystery) (Cassie Coburn Mysteries Book 1). Kindle Locations (128-192). Blueberry Books Press. Kindle Edition.

Meeting Violet and DCI Williams was an accident of being on the wrong floor, but one that would change things for Cassie.

Violet calls her and tells her to come to her place. When Cassie arrives, she sees that Violet has found her bicycle. However, Violet had something more in mind. The case she’s working on that the police do not believe her theory. When Cassie comes to the same conclusion, Violet is impressed, gives her the victim files telling her to read them and come back in the morning. They would figure out who the actual intended victim was and solve the case.

While Cassie is skeptical, this is the beginning of a very unusual and interesting friendship.

There are plenty of twists and surprises as this tale unfolds. I also think DCI Williams may have a crush on Cassie. One thing is certain, Cassie is never going to be bored.

5 Contented Purrs for Samantha!

Samantha Silver lives in British Columbia, Canada, along with her husband and seventeen-year-old dog named Terra.

When she’s not writing cozy mysteries, Samantha loves travelling (she’s most recently been to Egypt, Jordan and Florida) skiing, eating Dairy Queen, and complaining about how hard running is.