If you like your mystery with a dose of humor, you’ll enjoy Beth Gutcheon’s second book featuring retired headmistress Maggie Detweiler and her good friend and cohort, Hope Babbin, The Affliction.

Currently heading a team evaluating a girls’ boarding school on the Hudson River, Maggie soon finds the high and low points. She also finds Florence Meagher, the art history teacher, working on a book on Velasquez. She also had “the affliction” of not being able to stop talking once she gets started–and not knowing when to stop.

Until suddenly Florence is silenced forever when her body is found floating in the school’s pool. Asked to stay on as the crime is investigated, students and faculty alike come under the microscope of the local detectives, and of Maggie and Hope, running their own parellel investigation.

The women’s society contacts and friends in high places give them information the police detectives won’t uncover. Picture Rosemary and Thyme let loose in New York’s Hudson Valley and you’ll enjoy the adventures of this mature sleuthing duo who provide humor and suspense in equal measure.