Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Death at Breakfast | 2016 | Beth Gutcheon | Buy |
| 2 | The Affliction | 2018 | Beth Gutcheon | Buy |
The Maggie Detweiler and Hope Babbin series by Beth Gutcheon consists of Death at Breakfast (2016) and The Affliction (2018). The series pairs two older women as amateur detectives, bringing Gutcheon’s literary sensibility to the mystery genre. Death at Breakfast is set at a rural inn where a guest is found dead, and the two friends find themselves drawn into the investigation.
Gutcheon brings her decades of experience writing about social dynamics and human nature to the mystery format. The books have more in common with traditional British whodunits than with hard-boiled crime fiction, with the pleasure coming from the characters’ observations and deductions rather than from action sequences.