Happy first Wednesday of the month, and usually this would be where I publish my Quick Reviews for May. However, I have read a bunch of mysteries of various types that either came out yesterday, today or are coming out tomorrow and so I’m saving the quick reviews for another Wednesday and giving you a quick review round up for them. Why isn’t this just the May Quick Reviews repurposed? Well because I read one of them in April…
Played to Death by Mike Ripley*
This is quite a hard one to describe, because it’s told by four unreliable narrators, but I’m going to give it a go. A new murder mystery play is being put on by the Hopewell Players but there are some… concerns. Pantomime Dame and local solicitor Adam Cunningham consults a local librarian (and former crime fiction editor) because he thinks it’s ripping of a lot of Golden Age mysteries. The author of said play is the producer’s father but the future of the production is in doubt when one of the actors is found dead on stage. This is written by Mike Ripley, who also wrote a number of Campion continuation novels and he’s very much using his knowledge of Golden Age mysteries in this, but with a great twist with the shifting narration. I particularly enjoyed the footnotes about which books the various bits of plot had been lifted from. I read this in one day (not quite in one sitting) and immediately went off to read one of the aforementioned Campion continuations after I discovered that his other book featuring Roly the Librarian isn’t available on Kindle. The good news is that this is – and also that it’s out today and included in Kindle Unlimited.
The French Market Murder by Greg Mosse*
This is the third book in Greg Mosse’s series set around a bookshop in a small town in Provence. The first in the series was a BotW not that long ago and I’ve read book two since then as well, but I think I actually liked this the most of the three in terms of writing style and the regular characters but I found the solution to the mystery pretty predictable – I figured out most of it pretty quickly after the body was found, which actually happened quite late on for a murder mystery. But I do really like the setting and set up for this and would happily read more, and every time I read one I think that I should go and read his other series which features a much younger Zoe as a side character to the main sleuth, although without reading them it’s hard to tell how prominent she is but they get plenty of references in these! I really do fancy a holiday to Provence now though…
A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*
This is the follow up to 2025’s A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder which was also a BotW. We rejoin Alma at the gang at the Timperley shortly after the conclusion of that book – and as a warning, if you haven’t read the first book you will find out who did it if you read this one so plan your reading accordingly – and things seem to be going well. Well that is until a guest is found dead in their bed. With the police short-staffed because of officers signing up to fight, Alma is asked to help with the investigation and she’s very willing as the circumstances suggest that the killer may be inside the hotel. The mystery in this is good, and I liked the widening of the group around Alma as well. I’m not really into spiritualism or ghosts, but these are at the end of the ghostly spectrum that I can get on board with. I read this very quickly (across about 36 hours) and I’m so pleased that there’s already a third book planned that I have it pre-ordered already. If you haven’t read book one – and bearing in mind my warnings above you should before you read this – that one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you have that.
Sconed to Death by Betty Hechtman*
This is the second book featuring a heroine who inherited a yarn shop in a small Indiana town and (temporarily) moved there from LA. Annie’s father is a high powered entertainment agent, and in tow with her is Gray, the daughter of one of her father’s most important clients and now her business partner as Annie tries to get the yarn shop ready for sale. In this book the summer residents have descended on town and Annie has a lot of balls in the air, including trying to help Toby who bakes the scones for the yarn shop’s tea room get on a reality show in the hopes that it means that any buyer for the store will keep him on as a supplier. I realise that that sounds complex, and that’s not even the murder side of the plot! There is a murder (don’t worry) which could also be an obstacle to the sale of the tearoom and so Annie is soon low key investigating that. And also navigating a potential relationship and managing Gray’s fractious relationship with her mum. When you write that plot down it’s quite a lot, even with just the bare bones that I’ve given you, but it actually (mostly) works when you’re reading it. The set up of Annie’s presence in town is pretty neat and Gray’s pampered princess life makes for some good tension in the plot and some reasons why Annie wouldn’t just be having actual conversations at various points. The writing style was a little repetitive at times -for example it was reminding me of details that it had told me just a couple of pages prior, but I do wonder how I would have felt if I had read the first book and already knew all the backstory to everything because I definitely don’t think there is anything I was missing about the first book (except for who did the murder so that’s good at least). I haven’t read anything by Betty Hechtman before, but she’s a pretty established author so I suspect this is just her style and it might just not quite be for me, but I enjoyed this enough that I would happily read some more books by her to find that out!
And there you have it – four reviews of four books out this week. I promise that the quick reviews will turn up on a future Wednesday as will the Kindle Offers.
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 