THE EXPECTANT DETECTIVES

Murder at a prenatal class turns moms-to-be into sleuths.

An unexpected but not unwelcome pregnancy sends Londoners Alice and Joe to the Cotswold village of Penton in search of a quieter and less expensive place to welcome their imminent arrival. Penton’s “posh hippy” vibe intrigues but intimidates the couple, who revel in the town’s lush landscape but have to sleep on an air mattress because their bed won’t fit up the narrow staircase in their tiny cottage. Hoping to learn enough to get through the life-changing event that’s now less than a month off, they sign up for a prenatal crash course; the class will meet in three sessions over two weekends in the upstairs room of Nature’s Way, a shop catering to folks who want to replace their wind chimes or buy a few dozen new dream catchers. Dot, the class leader, believes anyone can give birth comfortably using no painkiller stronger than willow bark tea. Her approach is put to the test when Alice’s fellow student Hen goes into labor during the second session and welcomes her new daughter between screams of agony. Hen’s delivery, however, isn’t the evening’s headliner. Paramedics who arrive to offer Hen some modern medical care inform the prenatal students that there’s a “dead guy downstairs” in the shop. The police confirm that while Hen was loudly giving birth upstairs, the store’s owner, Crispin Oliver, quietly expired downstairs, and apparently not of natural causes. Alice and Hen join forces with steady Poppy and volatile Ailsa, their fellow students, to learn who would dispatch a gentle shopkeeper whose besetting sin was to offer slippery elm bark tea to expectant moms who’d really rather have a beer.

Pointed banter between the heroine and pretty much everyone else keeps this debut sharp.