Sparkling Cyanide
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 15+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
A sound puzzle with justice done. Two greedy lovers kill for an inheritance, try three times to kill a girl, and are caught by the police. The deaths first look like suicide and are shown to be murder, so the book neither accepts suicide nor excuses the killers. The reservation is adultery. A wife and a rising politician had an affair, and his own wife takes him back with no repentance that any source reports.
For parents
Read aloud from 14 if you wish. A teen can read it alone from 15. The plot turns on a married woman's affair and on deaths made to look like suicide. Adultery is a grave sin (CCC 2380), and the book never says so. Ask why a wife's silence is not the same as forgiveness. Ask what the affair cost everyone at that table.