Miss Tonks Turns to Crime

Booking Through Thursday just recently asked us "If you read series books, do you ever find a series 'jumping the shark?' How do you feel about that? And do you keep reading anyway?" I had answered that I hadn't really run into that many series where I felt that it had gone seriously off the rails. What tends to make me go off a series is when they seem way too formulaic. Case in point:

Miss Tonks Turns to Crime is only the second of Marion Chesney's The Poor Relation series but I already feel like we're heading into a serious rut. In the first novel we have is a group of "poor relations" who have banded together to run a hotel ("The Poor Relation"). The hotel does really well and it looks like these society cast-offs will make good. Then the hotel has a fire and they are starting from scratch again. In the second novel, poor Miss Tonks, the most timid of the group is sent off to steal something valuable from her rich relations so the hotel can get on its feet again. The story itself is very amusing and I like the characters...but 

***SPOILER***


after Miss Tonks manages to pull off a very nice little coup and bring home not only a diamond necklace, but a tiara as well...the money from the stolen goods gets stolen. And at the end of the book we're in the same place as where we began. So, guess what....another member of the happy little band is going to be sent off in the next book to do it all again. I'm sure Chesney will come up with a different twist...but please. Can we not have the hotel run successfully for a whole book and find some other challenge for our heroes to overcome?

Two stars out of five.