A Pen Dipped in Poison: A witty and cosy mystery story, perfect for fans of Richard Osman

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In this second book, the cast of characters is greatly augmented by being set in a school (the main three older women are all retired teachers who get pulled back in to various support roles in the running of the school). There was a LOT of focus on academies and primary schools and changes to these systems which I found to be irrelevant to the story (they didn't add anything interesting) and found myself skipping over. The dialogue and relationships within this book are wonderful and by the end I felt I was leaving friends.

But, despite the poison pen letters (a stable of classic mysteries) nothing moves this plot forward. When Kayleigh Brittain, the new head teacher, receives the first of what will be a series of nasty letters targeting teachers at the school, Thelma thinks it’s an isolated and unpleasant incident.The ladies end up helping out at the school in different capacities while they try to discover who the author of the letters could possibly be.

As I haven't read the first book in the series, I was happy to see some backstory to the characters.I also liked how he included topics such as schools turning into businesses, which made you really think. I haven't read the previous book by this author and found that there were a lot of characters to keep track of and I found the 3 main characters were not particularly different and or interesting. Boilers, almost-suicide, divorce, past relationships and nasty threats are all uncovered throughout the pages. Sitting in the conservatory with her after-lunch cup of tea she tried to rake her thoughts in the same way as she'd planned to rake leaves, but whenever she gathered ideas from one thought, along came a gust of another idea, scattering them again. During the day, he can be found getting top-tier press for his clients in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fortune and USA Today.

This time our unlikely heroines meet with the vagaries of school academisation and encounter a spate of poison pen letters, which have unintended consequences for those who become involved. Retired school teachers Liz, Pat and Thelma never expected they would be caught up in a crime even once in their lives, let alone twice! But as they work to uncover the truth, they begin to wonder just how far someone will go to silence this poison pen .You couldn't even tell that these women were friends with the way they spoke to each other like strangers. Retired schoolteachers Liz, Pat and Thelma never expected they would be caught up in a crime even once in their lives, let alone twice.

But as they work to uncover the truth, they begin to wonder just how far someone will go to silence this poison pen. But when poison pen letters start landing on the doorsteps of friends and neighbours in their Yorkshire village, old secrets come to light with the potential for deadly consequences. The background story of this and the previous book was very good but I felt the characters lacked depth. One if the biggest reasons I love cosy crime is the quick pace of it so for the storyline and “action” as it were to only kick in towards the end was a bit of a turn off.

I would have liked to have a little more backstory and duscussion of the main characters to make more of a story maybe you need to read the first but i thought i was missing bits of characters. So many of these characters were often introduced either by first or last name only, and later on referred to by the other; and often these names were dropped in conversations or hints at the plot without aiding the reader in linking back to a previous encounter, so it was hard to follow.