Misogyny, racism, & other WTFery | Murder at Honeychurch Hall by Hannah Dennison

Title: Murder at Honeychurch Hall
Series: Honeychurch Hall Mystery #1
Author: Hannah Dennison
Published: May 13, 2014
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller
Page Count: 304
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

Kat Stanford is just days away from starting her dream antique business with her newly widowed mother Iris when she gets a huge shock. Iris has recklessly purchased a dilapidated carriage house at Honeychurch Hall, an isolated country estate located several hundred miles from London.

Yet it seems that Iris isn’t the only one with surprises at Honeychurch Hall. Behind the crumbling façade, the inhabitants of the stately mansion are a lively group of eccentrics to be sure—both upstairs and downstairs —and they all have more than their fair share of skeletons in the closet.

When the nanny goes missing, and Vera, the loyal housekeeper ends up dead in the grotto, suspicions abound. Throw in a feisty, octogenarian countess, a precocious seven year old who is obsessed with the famous fighter pilot called Biggles, and a treasure trove of antiques, and there is more than one motive for murder.

As Iris’s past comes back to haunt her, Kat realizes she hardly knows her mother at all. And when the bodies start piling up, it is up to Kat to unravel the tangled truth behind the murders at Honeychurch Hall.

Murder at Honeychurch Hall is a “cozy” mystery featuring casual racism, casual misogyny, and characters so absurd they’re little more than caricatures. The entire book is a disaster, and Hannah Dennison couldn’t even get the mystery part right—the story has nary a dead body until well past the halfway point. What’s more, our horrifically banal-yet-obnoxious protagonist never once investigates; rather, she just so happens to stumble across the murderer, who cheerfully explains the means and motive behind Devon’s homicide du jour.

(tl;dr: this is utter shit.)

As mentioned above, this book’s mystery element is so scantily present that one can barely consider it a member of the genre. Instead, Murder at Honeychurch Hall reads most like a poorly-conceived farce that’s supposed to be funny—but only in the way that your racist uncle’s jokes at Thanksgiving are funny. Each and every character is exaggerated and absurd, from the boozy Louboutin-obsessed housekeeper to the implausibly precocious seven-year-old kleptomaniac. Most ridiculous of all is Dennison’s protagonist, Kat Stanford.

The book opens as Kat finds herself in rural Devon after her (allegedly) flighty and irresponsible mother purchases an old house—presumably with the money Kat’s “sainted” father left her. The author clearly wants readers to root for Kat, but her method of endearing her main character to audiences is…odd. To say the least. For the entirety of the novel, Kat judges and verbally abuses her mother, apparently taking cues from her now-deceased and equally abusive father. Kat’s mother is silly and inept, we are told, even as mounting evidence tends to indicate that the older woman is more than capable of handling her own affairs. Throughout all of this, it’s Kat who ends up looking idiotic. Indeed, even Kat’s awful “boyfriend” finds it necessary to point out her illogical (and cruel) behavior:

“Oh no, my father wasn’t oppressive! He just [proceeds to list oppressive behaviors].”

OKAY… sure, Jan.

The above is just one example of the novel’s constant internalized misogyny, which Dennison clearly intends to play up for laughs. At no point is Kat’s antagonism toward her mother interrogated. Every female character except for Kat is vapid and a “tart,” although we never see Kat do anything truly praiseworthy either. (As I said, she certainly doesn’t solve any mysteries.) I suppose that for some old white ladies, this sort of “haha, women are slutty sluts” humor is the peak of hilarity. But really, it’s just disgusting.

And of course, there’s more! Another “funny” plot element in Murder at Honeychurch Hall is unchallenged, casual racism. Dennison uses the slur “gypsy” over two dozen times, all as part of a humorous side-plot wherein Kat’s mother is writing “pornography” (i.e., bestselling historical romance novels). Dennison also just casually tosses in a scene at the pub where people are in blackface, just for a quaint touch of local color. BLACKFACE. This book was published in 2014, not 1814. Dennison + her entire editorial team either knew or should have known this was unacceptable.

And finally, I must ask: is the author a Luddite? The way this book gets even common, everyday technology so wrong had me really scratching my head. The book clearly takes place in roughly 2014: protagonist Kat is the unfortunate star of a viral video, she uses Google maps on her phone to navigate, and she lectures her mother about “living in the age of the internet.” Yet at the same time, we see Kat’s mother printing off her manuscript to send to her publisher (?), and when Kat needs to check her email, instead of just pulling up an app in her phone, she goes to an internet cafe (???). Ma’am, what the hell. Maybe these anachronisms are meant to convey how “rural” the small town setting is, but honestly…I’ve done my share of tromping around centuries old European hamlets with octogenarian populations, and I assure you that they have wifi and 4G.

All of this to say: Murder at Honeychurch Hall as atrocious. I didn’t even talk about the mystery in this review because there LITERALLY IS NO MYSTERY! Instead, it’s just a supposedly comedic interlude in small town England, populated with zany characters and cheerful misogyny. I understand that the first book in a cozy mystery series typically spends a lot of time “setting the stage” for books to come, but this stage is really only good for hurling rotten tomatoes at. Absolute, unmitigated garbage, from page 1 to The End.