Category: cozy crime

Book of the Week, cozy crime, first in series

Book of the Week: Buried in a Good Book

veritywilde

It’s only a couple of weeks since I did a recommendsday post of First books in mystery series, and here I am today back with a BotW post for another first book in a cozy mystery series. Who could have predicted it…

In Buried in a Good Book, thriller writer Tess has taken her daughter to spend the summer at her grandfather’s cabin in the woods. Tess is telling Gertie that it’s because a summer without wifi will do them both good, but really she’s trying to take Gertie’s mind off the fact that her father, Tess’s ex-husband hasn’t been in contact with Gertie for months. But soon after they arrive, there’s an explosion and fish guts start raining down on them but also a human arm. Tess is suddenly part of a real life murder mystery, rather than writing one – and the detective investigating is the spitting image of the hero of her books, a fact he’s not best pleased about.

This was my first book by Tamara Berry and it was a really nice read for a winter weekend. The mystery is more complicated than you expect and it’s got a nice sense of humour about it too – Tess can’t turn her writer brain off and she knows it’s ridiculous to be caught up in a real life murder and that she’s not helping herself. I read a couple of books last week where the amateur sleuth really wound me up, but Tess was such a great break from that. I liked the group of secondary characters that were being set up too – and the small town setting has enough detail that it doesn’t feel like a cliche. I was really pleased to see that there are already a couple more in the series and I may already have acquired book two…

I read this on Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo (although more expensive than Kindle) and in paperback with a different cover and at a frankly ridiculous price on Amazon at time of writing although it reckons there is only one copy next so who knows.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective, reviews

Book of the Week: Buffalo West Wing

veritywilde

As I said yesterday, most of my reading last week was to contribute to this year’s fifty states challenge and this was one of them. It’s slightly rule breaking but I’m going with it.

Buffalo West Wing is the fourth in Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef mystery series featuring Olivia Paras, who (as the title suggests) is the executive chef at the White House. In this, a new president has just been elected and that means big changes for the staff at the Residence. It also means Olivia needs to impress the new President and his family, but when some mystery chicken wings turn up in her kitchen, she gets off on the wrong foot with them because refuses to serve them to the First Kids. But when the people who do eat them fall ill, she’s caught up in a plot to threaten the First Family.

This is the first in this series that I’ve read (or even come across) and it had slightly more peril than I was expecting and also a lot of pre existing relationships to get my head around. But there was info there (and not in info dumps) that it made sense and I really enjoyed it. I would happily read more of the series.

I read this one in paperback as you can seem but as it’s nearly 15 years old (and the series has been dormant since 2016) they may not be that easy to find in physical copies. In fact I’m amazed I found this one in Waterstones a couple of months ago. But they are all available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

cozy crime, crime, detective, mystery, series

Mystery Series: Canon Clement

veritywilde

The TV adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles’ first novel in the Daniel Clement series arrives on TV soon so I thought now was a good time to write a series post about them, although I’ve already written a few bits about them in other posts.

Lets start with a reminder of the set up: It’s the late 1980s and Daniel Clement is Canon of the parish of Champton, a seemingly quiet and sleepy village (albeit a fairly large village judging by the number of shops it has!) where secrets are hiding below the surface. Murder Before Evensong sees battle lines being drawn in the village over a proposal for a lavatory in the church. You wouldn’t think that could lead to murder, but when it comes to parish rivalries, anything is possible! Trust me, I’ve seen things. One of the things that I like about the books is the fact that I can recognise a lot of the processes and ceremonies of the church as very similar to the ones that were happening in the parish church that I went to as a child.

There are four books and a Christmas novella in the series now and so far Coles has managed to find different places and set ups to put Daniel in so that Champton doesn’t quite feel like the St Mary Mead or Cabot Cove of the Midlands. So in book two he’s in a neighbouring parish that is being merged with Champton. In book three he’s taken a sabbatical from his day job to go back to the monastery where he trained and in book four there’s a movie crew filming at Champton House.

As you can see from the trailer above, the adaptation has Matthew Lewis aka Neville Longbottom as Daniel and Amanda Redman as his mother Audrey. It’s going out on Channel Five, which means it could go either way for me: I really liked the first couple of series of their All Creatures Great and Small adaptation, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with their other mystery series. But I remain hopeful and I may yet report back…

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective, first in series, mystery, reviews

Book of the Week: The Last Supper

veritywilde

It’s been more than a month since I picked a murder mystery for book of the week. Can you believe it? I can’t – and even when I went back and checked I still sort of didn’t believe it. But it’s true, so who says there’s no variety in my reading. And there’s more murder mysteries coming tomorrow in the Quick Reviews, but first let’s talk about The Last Supper.

Prudence Bulstrode is a retired TV chef. But when one of her former rivals is found dead in the garden of a house where she was catering a shooting weekend, Prudence is called in to replace her. Farleigh Manor is notorious for an unsolved murder from a century ago, but when Prudence arrives she is soon convinced that Deirdre’s death wasn’t a tragic accident but murder. And while her granddaughter, who she brought along to keep her out of getting into (even more) trouble starts investigating the old murder, Prudence sets out to solve the new one.

Rosemary Shrager is a chef who has been a semi regular on British TV for about 20 years now and before that she ran her own catering company, so the setting for this falls very much into her area of expertise and it shows. I personally have never been on a shooting weekend, but it very much felt like she had and all is those details really worked. I also found this quite humorous – with the tension and generation gap between Prudence and Suki, but couldn’t work whether that was deliberate or not. But does it matter if it was or wasn’t? The only disappointment to me was the eventual solution to the murder, which without giving spoilers about what precisely happened, I didn’t quite feel like the reader had all of the pieces for it to work as well as I wanted it to.

But it was a fun read that I finished in an afternoon and evening and I will definitely keep an eye out for the sequel (there are two now) to see if the humour was deliberate!

I bought my copy of The Last Supper secondhand and I’ve seen it in the shops fairly regularly. And it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, cozy crime, crime

Book of the Week: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

veritywilde

So a bit of a strange one this week – because I started this literal years ago and couldn’t get into it, gave up and then came back to it this weekend, started again and read it all in evening. So here we are.

Vera Wong is the 60-year-old proprietor of a tea shop. She likes to match make and meddle in her son’s life. But one day she finds a dead body in her shop and switches her focus to finding out who killed him – because she doesn’t think the police are trying hard enough. But it turns out that she likes her chief suspects a lot more than the victim and soon it’s all getting a bit messy.

So as I said, I didn’t get into this first time around at all and it did take a while to get into it the second time too. But I really liked Julia and Emma when they arrived and the effect that Vera had on their lives and that’s where I started to get into it and after that something clicked. The solution is clever and something I hadn’t spotted as well.

I do have a bit of a mixed record with Sutanto – I liked Dial A for Aunties, but didn’t enjoy the sequel and haven’t read the third yet, although I probably will for the sake of completeness because I am that person. There is a sequel to this, but given my prior experience who knows what I might make of that!

My copy of this one came from NetGalley an eon ago, but it should be fairly easy to get hold of if you want to – I’ve seen it in paperback in the big bookshops and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective

Book of the Week: A Farewell to Yarns

veritywilde

As you could see from the list yesterday, last week was mostly spent reading Mitchell and Markby books, but when I wasn’t reading those, I was reading another murder mystery from the early 1990s and that’s what I’m writing about today. And just to whet your appetite, I’ve got another series of a 1990s vintage coming to you on Friday. It’s like I’ve got a coherant theme happening… oh wait, I have. Two of them. Just you wait until tomorrow…

Anyway, Farewell to Yarns is the second book in a series featuring widowed single mum Jane Jeffry. It’s the run up to Christmas and as well as helping organise a church bazaar she’s got an old friend coming to visit her. Jane hasn’t seen Phyllis in years and surprised by the fact that she suddenly wants to visit her – and then is even more surprised when Phyllis turns up with a bratty son that no one knew she had. And then there’s a body and Jane can’t help but get involved in trying to figure out what happened.

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in at the moment, but this is another really easy to read and fun (if you know what I mean) cozy murder mystery. It’s not long, but the plot is clever if slightly outlandish in places, but that doesn’t matter because if you were going to rule out slightly bonkers things in books you’d never read any cozy crime at all! Think of all those small towns with insanely high murder rates and small businesses continuing to thrive even though their owners keep stumbling across bodies on the premises. I haven’t read the first book in the series, but it didn’t matter at all because any background you need is explained in this – and it’s only the second book in the series so there aren’t too many running plots that you need to get your head around anyway.

This one is going to be harder to get hold of – I bought my copy (and another in the series) in the second hand bookshop at Baddesley Clinton and it’s not available on Kindle. But Amazon and Abebooks have copies and sensible prices, and I’m hoping that I might be able to pick up a few more in the series if I keep my eyes peeled!

Happy Reading

Book of the Week, cozy crime, historical, mystery

Book of the Week: Deadly Summer Nights

veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone and today’s pick is a first in series historical cozy crime that I picked up when I was spending that Waterstones gift card before Christmas.

Our setting for Deadly Summer Nights is a holiday resort in up state New York. It’s 1953 and it’s the second season that Elizabeth has been managing Haggerman’s Catskill’s Resort. Her mother is a former actress and dancer and inherited the resort – and although she’s using her connections to book entertainment acts for the resort, it’s her daughter who is doing all the hard work on the day to day. And because it’s the 1950s and she’s a woman, not everyone is pleased about that – or prepared to listen to her. The last thing they need is a dead body at the resorts, but that’s what they’ve got. And in the dead man’s cabin the chief of police finds a copy of The Communist Manifesto and suddenly everyone is claiming that the resort is a hotbed of communists. But Elizabeth isn’t convinced and sets out to try and figure out what happened herself.

I really, really enjoyed this. The setting is fun and a bit different – even if I was really annoyed on Elizabeth’s behalf at all of these useless men who wanted to dismiss her. I do like a historical murder mystery and I haven’t read a lot that are set in mid-century America outside of a big city like New York. And the resort setting is a lot of fun whether it’s modern or historical- I’ve read Kathi Daley’s series set on a resort and I would happily read more if they appear.

This is also my first Vicki Delaney novel – although I have read one of her books under her Eva Gates pen name. There is only one other book in this series so far – and I will try and get hold of it to see what happens next. This has the start of a promising love triangle going on and I hope there’ll be clues in that about whether there will be more – Delaney seems to have a lot of series going on under her various names and I don’t know enough to know which ones are still active.

My copy came from the lovely cozy crime bookshelf in Waterstones Piccadilly, and I think it’s going to be a special order if you want the paperback version. And it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

bingeable series, cozy crime, detective, series

Bingeable Series: Museum Mysteries

veritywilde

Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with a cozy crime series that I blitzed my way through over a couple of months, and although I’m still annoyed that the final book is a different size to all the others, I enjoyed them enough that I’m trying to work past the issues it gives me for shelving them and writing about them anyway!

At the start of the series Nell Pratt is the chief fundraiser at the Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, when an archivist is found dead on the same day that it’s discovered that a collection of letters from George Washington is missing. Of course she starts to investigate – this is a cozy crime series after all – and thus a series of museum/antique related mysteries is underway. Like most similar series, Nell develops a group of friends and colleagues who help out with the investigation and there’s a running romantic subplot through the series too.

I bought the second in the series at Bristol this summer – and once I’d read it, I went off and started buying up the others and then read them in order. I really liked the set up of the museum and philanthropic community around Philadelphia – it felt like something a bit different after a lot of small business related cozies. I don’t know a lot about the way the museum sector works behind the scenes in the UK, let alone in the US so I have no criticisms to make on that front – I just enjoyed the mysteries and the characters and let it all unroll!

I haven’t read any other Sheila Connolly – and I was sad to see when I was digging around into her writing to find that she died in 2020. But she has other series that I will happily work my way through should the opportunity present itself.

This is another of those times where most of a cozy crime series isn’t available on Kindle – only the last one is in ebook format, and I didn’t realise when I ordered the paperback it that it was going to be a non-matching size – if I had I might have gone with the ebook.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: A Dark and Stormy Murder

veritywilde

This week I’m back in the cozy crime genre for my pick, and with a first in a series so I’m abiding by the rules (yes, those rules I set myself!).

And so the plot: Lena’s just landed a job as the assistant to her favourite writer, Camilla Graham and moved to a small town in Indiana. Lena has always wanted to be a writer and now she gets to learn from her idol. Lena’s best friend already lives in Blue Lake – in fact she’s the one who met Camilla first, but Lena quickly gets stuck into small town life and meeting the locals – including a notorious recluse and the chief detective. But when a body turns up on her boss’s land, and strange things start happening at the house Lena can’t help but start investigating…

This has a fairly classic cozy crime set up in many ways – small town, two potential love interests for the heroine and a developing group of friends. But the writing as a profession is fun and the actual murder plot is good and allows the development of Lena and Camilla’s working relationship as well as doing some world building work too. There’s also a secondary investigation going on that is setting up more for the series, so it feels quite action packed – and I mean that in a good way. At the moment Lena seems to be picking my least favourite of the two love interests but there’s plenty of scope for either him to grow on me or for her to change her mind. This is my first book by Julia Buckley, and there another five in this series and she has a couple of other series too so that’s something to look forward to, if I can just get the tbr under control…

I read this one in paperback, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

cozy crime, detective, Series I love

Series I Love: Maine Clambake mysteries

veritywilde

I wrote about this series briefly back in 2022 as a bingeable series, but we’re two years on now and I’ve read eleven of the twelve in the series and I want to upgrade it to a series I love!

Our heroine is Julia Snowden, who grew up in the small Maine town of Busman’s Harbor then moved away for college and to work in finance and then returned at the start of the series to help her family’s struggling business. That’s the clambake of the series title, which is on an island a short boat ride from the town, which her family has owned for several generations. The first mystery is set on the island, but there’s enough building out of the world that there are plenty of options for murder locations (and victims) so that Julia’s business doesn’t start to seem cursed and you wonder how they are staying in business!

One of the things that I particularly like about the series is that it shows the seasonal life of the town – with the frantically busy summer season as the locals try to make the maximum possible from the influx of tourists and then the quieter winter months where many people have to find other sources of income to sustain them until the weather improves again. It also touches on issues like gentrification and modernisation and the impact of the loss of traditional industries on coastal towns like Busman’s Harbor.

Beyond Julia there is a large cast of regulars, including her mother, her sister and her sister’s family, but also others that I don’t want to mention because it’s going to be spoilery. Suffice it to say that Julia builds out a nice life for herself in the town and that Barbara Ross resists the urge to marry her off quickly to an obvious love interest. And we know how much I like that in a cozy series – see also Meg Langslow and Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery and Library Lovers series.

Now eleven of the twelve have recently* dropped into Kindle Unlimited which makes it a great time to have a good old binge on them. The twelfth only came out in April, and there’s no announcement yet for a thirteen so we probably have about nine months at least to wait for another installment.

Have a great weekend everyone

*I mean recently enough that I’ve only just noticed despite having the ones I hadn’t read on more than one of my Amazon wishlists.