Witty Little Knitter

The main character in this book is Jane. Jane is Canadian. That means she is from Canada. Jane likes Canada. Very much. She likes Canadian beer and she finds lots of things the English say or do a bit weird. She will point out all these things to the reader. Just like the fact that she is Canadian. The reader might get slightly annoyed at the gazilion mentions of English weirdness.To be fair it is not done in a 'Oh look Canada is awesome and England sucks'-way but not mentioning every single cheap clichee about English who like to talk about the weather and have bad teeth wouldn't have hurt.Generally it took my some time to get into the book as Jane didn't start out as extremely likeable character but seemed a bit like a spoiled brat (wages in London suck and the rent is high...oh noes! no mention why living and working somewhere else is out of the question) and everybody else like a walking stereotype: bitchy colleague, gay colleague, horrible boss, horrible and self-centred film-director...especially the gay colleague *outch*. Oh and apparently most footmen working at the palace are gay. This is just presented as fact...because of...reasons.Then the book hits us with some weird logic: Jane knows that the victim had wanted to talk to the Queen in private, when the Queen learns about this she say the police should learn about this...but then Jane says that she's sure Roger had a real reason for wanting to talk to the Queen...and then they decide that means they can't tell the police...whut? (especially because later Jane argues more along the lines of 'If the police knows, the tabloids would find out' which is a more valid reason).The book also seems to use every single cheap crime-trope:We get the "But that wasn't important. Or so I thought at the time." twice, the main-character having a strange dream, the "I was sure there was something I had overlooked." and of course "And then it all made sense." including about 50 pages where she refuses to tell the reader what exactly made sense now until the big Hercule Poirot-style assembly in the library (which few writers actually manage pull of as well as Agatha Christie and Benison isn't one of them).Though overall the mystery was...nice. Not as blatantly obvious to figure out as in some other cozies but I also was never really surprised about any of the oh-so-surprising reveals.