The Music Box and The Missing Bride (A Salt and Cedar Antiques Mystery) by Evelyn Hartwell; Charming Gentle Cozy Mystery About Buried Secrets and Caring For Antiques
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: It makes sense that in the gentle character driven world of Cozy Mysteries, antiques dealers make good amateur detectives. Both detectives and antiques dealers observe objects to find out histories of the people who encounter them. That's the premise behind The Music Box and The Missing Bride, the first volume in The Salt and Cedar Antiques Mystery series by Evelyn Hartwell. It is a charming and gentle cozy mystery that features this premise.
Mara Ellison and Tessa Bloom, proprietors of The Salt and Cedar Antiques store, know how to study, preserve, and sell antiques. At an estate sale, they reach various objects to be examined and displayed. One of them is more interesting than the others. It's a music box with a secret compartment that holds a ring. This attracts the curiosity of the two women and the music box becomes the catalyst for an investigation in the life of a woman who was stuck in a prestigious but miserable marriage and her frantic desire to escape from it.
There are some flaws in the book’s execution but it has an understanding of appraising and caring for antiques and the stories of the people who once held them.
The highlights are not the mystery but the inside look at the antique trade. This book is filled with various moments of antiques being purchased at yard and estate sales, people donating family members’ old treasures, appraising if the items are worth being sold, examining the items, checking for wear and deficiencies, seeing if it needs repair, seeing if it can be repaired without ruining it, learning the story connected to the item, selling it for the right price and moving onto another item.
It is a close up view of what for many readers is often simply a few hours of window shopping and browsing through old photographs, toys, porcelain dolls, miniatures, tchotchkes, and other items. You may wonder who owned them and what the story was behind it. Well this book provides just such a possible story.
The music box gives off that air of mystery with its secret compartment and the wedding ring hidden inside. Why would it be hidden? Who owned it? Who was meant to receive the box? Was there a hidden message connected to the box? Who was the sender and recipient, and what did the message say? Why would someone hide their wedding ring instead of wearing it? If they got cold feet and ran off, where are they now?
The antiques portion of the book practically overshadows the rest.The main detective duo, Mara and Tessa are incredibly likeable and curious but practically interchangeable. They don't have many distinct characteristics that set them apart from each other and not much of a personal life beyond identifying, investigating, and selling antiques.
Their only real difference is Mara is more experienced in antique selling and repair than the younger Tessa. Most of their dialogue consists of Mara showing Tessa the ropes in the antiques trade to give her and the reader important insights in how to collect, gather, and care for antiques.
The central mystery is interesting in unraveling the story behind the music box and the ring. We get a story of a woman caught between duty and love and is forced to hide her true self and actual love of her life from a disapproving judgemental public. The box and ring symbolize all that is beautiful and hidden in the name of respectability and conformity.
Since the mystery is entirely set in the past and mostly involves Mara and Tessa investigating in the present, there really isn't much in the way of suspense. The duo are never really in danger and there are no modern people threatening them from revealing the truth. In fact most people provide tips and clues and are just as fascinated as Mara and Tessa are to find out the story.
The lack of suspense makes the book kind of dull but it also gives the narrative a gentle softer approach than most mysteries, even cozy ones. It's not something to be read to keep you on the edge of your seat. Instead it lets you stay where you are in the center of the seat while reading a calming soothing antique collector’s guide and cold case mystery.
