Hannah Hendy Audiobooks

The Dinner Lady Detectives: village cosy crime with a poisoning to solve

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.3/5 average

883 listener ratings

Who is Hannah Hendy?

A series called The Dinner Lady Detectives tells you a great deal before you press play. Hannah Hendy writes cosy crime in the classic English mode, where the investigating is done by people with no business investigating anything, and where the setting is a village small enough for everybody’s secrets to be everybody’s business.

A Terrible Village Poisoning is the third case in that sequence, and our shelving files it under LGBTQ+, which tells you the lives at the centre of these books are queer ones, drawn without fuss. The tone stays light, the violence stays offstage, and the pleasure is largely in the company.

Hannah Hendy in audiobooks

Jenny Funnell narrates, and cosy crime lives or dies on that voice: the register has to be amused without turning arch, and warm without tipping into whimsy. Eight hours passes very easily in that company.

Several hundred listeners have rated this one and the average has held steady, which for a mid sequence entry suggests an audience that stayed rather than drifted. You can begin here without feeling lost, though starting with the first case gives the relationships their full weight. Both routes open below.