October 2026

In attendance this month: Sonia Featherstone (Chair), Constance Dilmore, Gerard Savin, Joe Halton, Eleanora Reingold, and yours truly. Alfred Bushwell sent his apologies, a hospital appointment keeping him away. There was simply a small silence before Sonia moved briskly on.

This month’s book was Robert Thorogood’s second book in the Marlow Murder Club series, Death Comes to Marlow, in which Judith, Susie and Becks reconvene a year after their first triumph to establish whether Sir Peter Bailey’s death on the eve of his wedding was murder, accident, or simply bad luck.

Sonia opened proceedings by declaring the book a triumph of misdirection. She’d never once suspected the murderer, which for Sonia amounts to the highest praise a mystery can receive. Gerard, meanwhile, was less taken with the plotting than with the friendship at its centre. He spoke warmly of how Judith, Susie and Becks had grown close enough to support each other with their personal problems.

Constance disagreed. The author, she pointed out, has had two entire books to reveal what’s troubling Judith, and he has revealed precisely nothing. She wished to know how many further instalments she is expected to read through before being told.

Joe supplied the answer: Book Five. Constance asked, not unreasonably, whether he’d read it. He hadn’t. He’d Googled it, then admitted that he’d watched the first two series of the television adaptation and then stopped.

This proved to be the spark. Eleanora, who has read every book and watched every episode, declared the novels comfortably superior to the screen version. Joe, delighted to have found an ally in unexpected quarters, asked whether she preferred Thorogood’s TV show Trouble in Paradise as well. She did. Gerard confessed he remained undecided about that television series.

By this point the conversation had drifted so entirely from the book that it took Sonia to call the room back to order. The Welston Book Worms appeared to be turning into reviewers of television programmes. It was, I noted, the first time anyone had beaten Rulebook Eleanora at her own game.

Salvation, as ever, was of the edible variety. Mina Goodacre appeared bearing a Barmbrack loaf, offering to toast and butter it for anyone willing to wait. Joe wanted to know what was in it. Flour, sultanas, raisins, Mina explained. Traditionally baked in Ireland for Halloween, the bread contains small tokens hidden inside to tell your fortune: a pea for no marriage, a stick for an unhappy one, a coin for good luck, a ring for a wedding, a thimble for a lifetime of solitude, and a bean for poverty.

The ripple of raised hands slowly lowered itself back down as she went through the list, each Book Worm apparently deciding their fortune was best left untested. Mina, thoroughly amused, put everyone out of their misery: the Bookish Barista’s loaf contained no tokens at all. Just bread.

With the Barmbrack toasting and the murder of Sir Peter left comfortably solved, it was unanimously agreed—book enjoyed, adaptation less so—that the meeting should end.