Lets be honest, in a month that was dominated by my massive re-read binge through the Mitchell and Markby series I’m surprised and pleased that there was enough other stuff on the reading list that I had books for a quick reviews post at all, considering at times I was having to force myself to stop reading about Meredith and Alan in order to have something for Book of the Week! And yet here we are. I did it.
Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary
Julian Clary’s new murder mystery centres on a death that happens on stage during a performance the first night of a new play at the London Palladium. We know from the start about the murder – but the first half of the book follows the show on it’s initial provincial tour so you can see the dynamics and the tensions building before the fatal moment. Our main character is Jayne, a dresser for the show, but Julian has written a version of himself into the show as a friend of hers – and the show is told in extracts from Jane’s diary, commentary from Julian, snippets from a WhatsApp group with the actors, posts from a theatre blog, newspaper headlines, police interviews etc. I saw a couple of the twists coming – but I think you were meant to because Jayne is quite a naive character in some ways and she balances out the cynicism and bitchiness of Julian’s commentary!
Death at the Playhouses by Stuart Douglas
This is the second in the Lowe and Le Breton series – I read the first at the back end of last year and made it a BotW so I thought I’d report back in on the follow up as well. This sees Edward and John accepting roles in a regional production of Shakespeare during the gap between filming of their sitcom. But when the actor that John replaced turns up dead, they find themselves caught up in another murder investigation, this time with links to John’s past. This is fun – but it’s a bit over long and there’s one big continuity mistake (or at least confusion in the chronology) that really lifted me out of the story. But I continue to like the characters and will happily read a third in the series should it materialise.
The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey
Astonishingly we have reached the twelfth in the Edwardian mystery series set in a very murderous patch of Gloucestershire. This time Lady Hardcastle and Florence are investigating rumours of a panther stalking the neighbourhood after a sheep is mauled to death. They’re convinced that there must be a rational explanation – but then a local man is seemingly torn to shreds and the villagers start to get really scared. Can they figure out what is going on before someone else dies? As is sometimes the case with these, I had the solution figured out relatively early, but I don’t really mind because I like the characters and the setting so much. This has got plenty of action with the village in it as well as a bit of a knowing wink going on about the death rate in Littleton Cotterell too which is a nice touch. While these continue to be in Kindle Unlimited (and I have a subscription) I will continue to read them!
And that’s your lot this month – a reminder that the Books of the Week in May were Tea on Sunday, Underscore, A Farewell to Yarns and On Turpentine Lane and the recommendsdays were Brighton-set books and Struggling Wives.
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
A Curtain Call to murder sounds brilliant and I do want to read the Stuart Douglas too.
I really liked how much like Julian’s sections of the book sounded like him while making the other sections sound distinctively different, but still with a humour. I had a look at the audiobook the other day and it’s got a multi cast recording where Julian does himself and there are other narrators for the other PoVs. You can only hear him in the sample though and not any of the others (except where they introduce themselves) – because the start of the book is all prologue/introduction but he sounded great.