Category: mystery

detective, mystery, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Real People Detective Fiction

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So I said yesterday that I had plans for some of the other books that I read last week – and one of them inspired this post. So here I am delivering on my promise that you’d hear more about some of last week’s reading and not just the BotW! This post is about mystery books that feature real people as the detectives.

So lets start with the book that inspired this: The Mystery at Rake Hall by Maureen Paton. This new mystery novel came out earlier this month (I got my copy via NetGalley) and is set in post-war Oxford and features C S Lewis – known as Jack – getting drawn into a mystery after one of his brightest pupils stops coming to her tutorials. Susan it turns out is at Rake Hall, a seemingly respectable hostel for unmarried mothers. But there’s more to it than meets the eye and along with Lucy, one of Susan’s friends and the daughter of a college servant, Jack starts to investigate. I don’t know a lot about the real C S Lewis, but this is a good mystery in a great setting. I love Gaudy Night, and that world of scouts and bulldogs is very much still in evidence here a decade or more after Sayers’ novel – and Sayers herself makes an appearance here too.

From one golden age author to another – and Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series. I’ve written about these before, but they’re probably the most well known of the fictionalised real person solves crimes books. Because of the circles that Tey moved in, this also features people like Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne Du Maurier in the stories as Upson weaves the mysteries around the real events of Tey’s life. There are eleven books in the series, and I don’t remember feeling like it was all wrapped up when I finished Shot With Crimson – but that came out in 2023 and there hasn’t been another yet. And although Upson has a new book listed on Amazon, it seems to be a standalone Christmas mystery set in 1943 (which I will definitely be looking out for) rather than another Tey novel but details are sketchy so we will see. Margery Allingham makes an appearance in one of the Upson novels – and I’m pretty sure there’s a mystery series featuring Agatha Christie doing the detecting as well, so only Ngaio Marsh to go to complete the set of Queens of Crime!

It’s been a few years since I read them, but there is also Gyles Brandreth’s series of Oscar Wilde murder mysteries which also feature Arthur Conan Doyle and Wordsworth’s great grandson Robert Sherard. There are seven in this series, and I’ve read the first three and book five (I used to get them from the library, but my local library closed down for: reasons and I’ve not been a library regular since) but they’re clever mysteries with a dash of wit – although obviously you are heading towards Wilde’s eventual imprisonment (which is part of book six) and some of the foreshadowing of that can be a bit… clunky. But if you see them around, they’re worth a look.

And finally a slightly tangential one – and one where I’ve only read two of them. Jessica Fellowes’s Mitford Murder mysteries. I say they’re tangential because they’re set in the Mitford household, but its one of the staff who is doing the actual mystery solving. Louisa is nursery maid to the younger children and chaperone to the older ones (at least to start with), and this means that she has a ringside seat to the events of the Mitford sisters’ eventful lives. I will say that I thought the first one didn’t quite live up to the promise that it had in the blurb, and the second one had more of the stuff that I didn’t like about them and so I haven’t read any more of them – but the fact that they got to six in the series and I see various of them in paperback in the crime sections of the big bookshops fairly regularly suggests that other people liked them more than me!

That’s your lot for this week – hopefully there’s something here for you – but also, don’t forget I’ve got a whole post about Novelised Real People (in books that aren’t mysteries) from back in 2021.

Have a great Wednesday!

Book of the Week, historical, mystery

Book of the Week: A Case of Mice and Murder

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I said yesterday that I’d had a really good week in reading, and I had several options for this today – but I’ve gone with this because I went straight on to the sequel (thank you NetGalley!) and I also have a plan for some of the other options, so fear not, you will hear about more of last week’s reading in due course…

In A Case of Mice and Murder it is 1901 and the calm of the Inner Temple is about to be disrupted as the body of the Lord Chancellor is discovered with a carving knife in his chest outside the chambers of Gabriel Ward KC. Ward is coerced/inveigled into investigating by the Head of the Temple, who is anxious to keep scandal – and the police – at bay as far as possible.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the eccentricities of the English legal system, the Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court. Along with the Middle Temple, it is situated between Fleet Street and the Embankment on the bank of the Thames, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice in Central London. The four societies (the other two are Greys Inn and Lincolns Inn) are responsible for the training, regulating and selection of barristers in England and Wales. The Middle and Inner Temple were founded by Knights Templar in the twelfth century and has special powers that mean it has operated as a special independent enclave throughout its history. This makes it a great setting for a closed community murder mystery in the middle of a city. Sally Smith is an Inner Temple KC herself and uses all her knowledge from living and working in the Inner Temple to bring the setting to life.

Gabriel is a great character too. He’s definitely a reluctant detective, but reluctant could also apply to a lot of the rest of his life. The way that the Inner Temple works has enabled him to create a life that he loves within a very small area, hedged around with routines and traditions. He’s also very solitary and keeps himself out of the politics and wrangling of the Inner Temple – because he has no desire to hold any of the leadership roles. So the discovery of the Lord Chancellor’s body disrupts this life and brings him into contact with all sorts of new things and people. One of these people is Constable Wright of the City of London Police (not to be confused with the Metropolitan Police) who is one of the police officers charged with investigating the death and the two very different men work together to figure out what happened.

I really, really enjoyed this and as I said at the top I went straight on to the sequel (which is coming out in July) and if there had been a third book I would have gone straight on to that too. I love a historical murder mystery and not only did I love the setting, I also loved the time period – it starts in May 1901, just a few months after the death of Queen Victoria at the start of the Edwardian era. There are lots of Victorian set mysteries and there are lots set in the years between the World Wars, but really not that many in the Edwardian era. So it’s a delightful change all around.

I bought this in paperback (thank you buy one, get one half price deal) but it’s also out in Kindle and Kobo. I suspect the price of this one will drop when the second one is imminent, so if you’ve already blown your book budget this month, do add it to your watch list.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, detective, historical, mystery, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: The Edinburgh Murders

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I’m breaking a couple of rules this week because somewhere along the line I had managed to miss that Catriona McPherson had started a new series – and that we were on to the second book in it. But as The Edinburgh Murders came out last week I am at least timely!

Covers of The Edinburgh Murders

It’s 1948 and Helen Crowther is a welfare almoner for the newly formed NHS in Edinburgh. It’s not an easy or a popular job, and her home life isn’t simple either but she keeps on going. While she’s at the bath house with one of her clients, the body of a man is found boiled to death in one of the cubicles. And then another couple of bodies turn up and Helen finds herself investigating because she’s noticed a few things that are worryingly close to home.

This has a great setting and a cleverly put together mystery to solve. I found Helen a really interesting character, and her job gives her an excellent excuse to be sticking her nose into other people’s lives. There aren’t as many historical mystery series set in the immediate post war period as there are set in the 1930s so that make a really nice change as well as the Edinburgh setting. I’m pretty sure this will work best for you if you’ve already read the first book, but I haven’t and I still enjoyed it! Like with McPherson’s Dandy Gilver series, the mystery is darker than you often find in historical mysteries, but it’s not too graphic although there are a couple of gruesome moments its more implied than right there on the page.

My copy came via NetGalley, but it’s out now in the UK on Kindle and Kobo as well as in paperback. I couldn’t find the first one of these in the shops last week when I was looking, so I don’t know how easy the hardcover version of this is going to be to find though.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: Death Upon a Star

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Happy Tuesday everyone, this week I’ve got a review of one of last week’s new releases for you – so points to me for being timely for once!

It’s 1939, and Evelyn Galloway is a script supervisor who has just arrived in Hollywood. She’s a script supervisor and she’s got a job working on Alfred Hitchcock’s new movie, Rebecca. Soon she’s on the film lot and mixing with the stars and crew. When she meets one of her favourite actors, she’s delighted to find that he’s actually a nice person and they arrange to meet for lunch. Except that he never turns up – and is then found murdered. When the stories in the papers don’t match up with what she know, Evelyn decides to start looking into the murder herself.

This is the first in a series – and there’s a bit of mysterious backstory going on here as well as the mystery plot. This is right in a part of history when I think mystery stories really work and Hollywood is a fun setting for something like this. There are some real people in this in minor roles, and there are some bits that are inspired by real people or stories that you can spot too if you’ve read a bit about golden age Hollywood. It’s not ground breaking, but it is a nice easy and relaxing read that is a fun way of spending a few hours. I would happily read the next one in the series if it passed my way.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it came out last week and it’s available now in Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, historical, mystery

Book of the Week: Deadly Summer Nights

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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!

mystery, series

Mystery series: Marlow Murder Club

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Happy Friday everyone and after all the quiet of December we have loads of new releases starting to come through and so today’s post is about one of the series that I’ve been enjoying which has a new instalment out this week: The Marlow Murder Club.

In the first book, Judith, who is in her late 70s and is a crossword setter for The Times, witnesses a murder while out swimming in the Thames and when the police don’t believe her, sets out to solve the crime with the help of local dog walker Suzie and Becks, the vicar’s wife. In books two and three they’re investigating the deaths of local grandees and gaining a certain amount of local notoriety as well as a a grudging alliance with one of the local detectives. The new book, Murder on the Marlow Belle features the local amateur dramatic group, whose founder member is found dead the morning after a river cruise with the group’s most famous former member. And it has the bonus of one of the characters being called Verity, which is always fun, although Veritys don’t have a great record in murder mysteries – Verity is after all the victim whose murder Miss Marple is trying to solve in Nemesis.

I particularly like this series because one of my ex-boyfriends lived in Marlow so I spent a bit of time around there over the years and it’s always fun when places that you’ve lived in or know well are in Books! More than that, these is just so easy to read – a bit like the Richard Osmans are, although in a different style. They’re written by Robert Thorogood who also came up with the idea for the death in Paradise TV series and books. We watched a lot of Death in Paradise over Christmas and you’ll be glad to hear that the books are a bit more complicated than Death in Paradise episode but you can see a lot of the same sort of things going on here.

There was a TV adaptation of the first book last year and they needed two episodes to get through all the plot. They’ve made a couple of changes for the TV series – for example Samantha Bond is at least a decade younger than Book Judith and is playing her as more her own age than the book. And as I said when I wrote that post about the adaptation I find them more obviously comedic on TV – in fact it’s almost too cringe for me. But in the books I don’t notice that and I really like them. Of course it does post a question of what’s gonna happen with when the Thursday Murder Club comes out as a movie. What am I going to notice in the adaptation that I didn’t in books and am I going to enjoy that as a movie as much as I enjoy the books. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway, you should be able to get hold of any of these pretty easily, I’ve seen them all over the shops. My copy came from NetGalley – hence why I’m up to date for once! As I said at the top, the new one came out yesterday, so you can get that on Kindle and Kobo now, and the other three are at reasonable prices as ebooks at the moment too: here are the Kindle and Kobo links to those too. And indeed there’s already a preorder link up for an as yet untitled fifth book – due this time next year!

Have a great weekend everyone

mystery, series

Mystery Series: The Secret Bookcase

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Happy Friday everyone! The fourth in Ellie Alexander’s new series based around a bookshop in California came out on Wednesday, and I have read all four of them, so now it’s time to write about them!

Our heroine is Annie Murray, a former criminology student turned bookseller at the Secret Bookcase in the small town of Redwood Grove in California. IN the first book, The Body in the Bookstore, she’s looking to try and boost the shop’s prospects by expanding into events – but of course a body turns up and she needs to solve the crime or the shop will end up in an even worse situation than it was to start with. Investigating the murder is one of her former professors, who also tries to entice Annie back to the world of criminology which she left after her best friend was murdered – in a crime which remains unsolved. And thus we have the template for the series so far – Annie organises an event and there’s a murder, and in the background she’s trying to decide between bookselling and criminology but with the running thread of that unsolved murder of her best friend in the background.

These are really easy to read, well plotted cozy crime novels. Annie has a nice group of friends around her which make for good secondary characters, and the events mean that there’s been a variety of locations where the murders have taken place, not just in the bookshop which helps with the “How is this business still going given all the murders” issue of the small business cozy crime. I have a little less patience with the best friend murder running strand than I do with the crime of the week (so to speak) but that’s probably because it’s going so slowly and I just want it wrapped up and sorted. But given the structure of the books, I get why it’s not happening fast.

In an astonishing turn of events, the first of this series only came out in June, and we’re already up to book four – with book five coming early next year. I’m assuming Ellie Alexander had a few of these stacked up already because the first two came out on the same day and then we’ve had another one every three months so far since, so we’ll see how long that pace can keep up, especially given as she has a couple of other series too. They’ve used various comps across the four books – some of which I don’t agree with because they lean towards the comedic and I don’t really see that in these, but generally, if you like a small business cozy crime, these may well work for you.

Anyway, I read the first one and the fourth one via NetGalley, but two and three thanks to the wonders of Kindle Unlimited. And that of course means that these are only on Kobo as audiobooks.

Have a great weekend!

detective, Forgotten books, mystery, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: BLCC round-up 2024 edition

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It’s been a while, but here I am, back with another post of some of the really good British Library Crime Classics I’ve read recently. And recently is a fairly elastic thing, because I started putting this together ages ago, and then some of the books that I was expecting to use in this ended up being Books of the Week instead!

Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac

This is set in the Welsh borders where an elderly doctor known for his erratic driving has gone off the road and into the river – but when the police pull out the vehicle a second body is discovered in the back. Who is the mystery corpse, how did he get there and was the doctor responsible? This is another mystery centering on a tight knit community where everyone knows everyone else’s business and so clues can be picked up that way. Really good and atmospheric.

Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

This is a murder mystery about the murder of a deeply unpopular man, who drops dead on a train to London. There are four suspects, and the story is told by intercutting the investigation by Inspector Fenby and judge sitting watching the prosecution at the trial – which he intends to be his last case before retirement – without telling you who the accused is until very late on. I really enjoyed reading it – I wasn’t sure who I thought the accused was going to turn out to be, and then I very much enjoyed how it all revealed itself and what the solution turned out to be.

The Measure of Malice Edited by Martin Edwards

A collection of murder mystery short stories all with some sort of scientific twist to them. There are some authors here I haven’t come across before along with some familiar names if you’ve read other BLCC titles and then two really big names in Conan Doyle and Dorothy L Sayers. Not being a Sherlock Holmes expert I can’t tell you if the story here is one of the better known ones, but I can say that the Sayers is a Wimsey that I have read before in one of the Wimsey short story collections, which probably isn’t a surprise, although it is a good one (even if I think bits of it clash with part of the first Paton Walsh continuation, but that’s a really nerdy point). All in all a good and varied selection.

And that’s it – and I can’t see that I’ll have read enough of these for another round of of BLCC before the end of the year, although who knows whether one will end up as a Book of the Week before then in the six weeks we have to go…

Happy Humpday everyone!

mystery, series

Mystery Series: Agatha Raisin

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The 35th in Agatha Raisin series came out yesterday in the UK – and the first nine are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so it seemed like a good time to write about M C Beaton’s Cotswold-based mystery series.

Agatha is a middle-aged public relations agent, who at the start of the series sells her Mayfair firm so she can retire early and move to the Cotswolds. She soon finds herself caught up in a murder investigation – after she tries to ensure that she’ll win a baking competition by buying in her entry only for one of the judges to drop dead after eating it and she has to clear her name. Soon she’s stumbling over murders where ever she goes and gaining a reputation for her detective work, until in the fifteenth book she sets up her own private investigations agency.

Agatha is originally from Birmingham where her parents lived in a tower block in a slum and she has dragged herself up through her own efforts. She’s prickly, she doesn’t really understand the countryside and she hides her vulnerability under a hard shell that very few people actually see through. There is a regular cast of characters alongside her who help to smooth her path – and smooth off her edges. From the local police force there is Bill Wong, who is the first friend that she makes after moving, then there is Mrs Bloxby the vicar’s wife who helps her navigate the village, Roy Silver who used to work with Agatha in London and who pops up from time to time and then James Lacey, Agatha’s handsome next door neighbour and Sir Charles Fraith a rich but stingy friend – both of whom are love interests of sorts at various points.

Agatha is 53 in the first book in the series and has remained “in her early 50s” throughout the whole series – they’re another series that I would describe as existing in the floating “now”* where time has moved on but the characters have remained the same age. Aside from the detective agency development, Agatha’s life remains fairly similar through the series – even if some times you think things are changing!

I originally read the first dozen or so back in the early 2000s, and then after reading too many of them in a row started to get a bit fed up with the formula (see above!) – which I’ve found is very much a thing with M C Beaton books as I have the same issue with Hamish Macbeth but also her historical romances. But as long as you read them well spaced out there’re a lot of fun – as are the radio versions with Penelope Keith. The TV series – which has Ashley Jensen as Agatha – is quite a different beast to the books and I suggest if you do do both then you may be need to separate them off from each other in your head, much the way I did with the Phryne Fisher books vs the TV series.

M C Beaton – aka Marion Chesney – died in 2019, but the series has continued – with book 31 onward being credited as “with R W Green”. I need to read some of the latest ones to see if/how the series has changed at all – the most recent one I’ve read is book 28 (and I’ve read all bar about two of the series up to that point) which probably takes you up until the point where the libraries closed for Covid, because that’s how I used to read them. I would go and borrow some more – but we all know how big The Pile is at the moment. But if you haven’t read any of them, do try the early bit of the series out via Kindle Unlimited.

Happy Reading!

*See also Elizabeth Peters’s Vicky Bliss series in a way, where the first book was written in the 1970s and the last book in the mid 2008s, where the settings remain fairly close to the time that they are written in, but Vicky remains about the same age.

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Tour de Force

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Once again my attempts to get another British Library Crime Classics post written is thwarted by picking one as a BotW. Hey ho. These things happen.

Inspector Cockerill is on holiday. He’s already regretting leaving Britain on a package tour by the time the plan lands in Italy, but by the time the tour group make it to a tiny island off the Italian coast the whole tour group is consumed with tension and rivalries. And then one of them is murdered in the hotel. Cockerill believes the killer must be one of the people who was on the beach with him and sets out to try and figure out who is responsible before the local police pick who they think is the culprit.

This is the sixth mystery featuring Inspector Cockerill and was first published in 1955. It contains some of the attitudes to foreign people that you often spot in British books of this era, but the difference between this and say, Shirley Flight – Air Hostess, is that I’m fairly sure Christianna Brand is doing that as satire – or at least for humorous reasons. The actual murder itself is a really cleverly constructed “impossible crime” and there are certainly plenty of people with motives for it. And when the solution is unravelled you see that all the clues were there and you just missed them. It’s pretty good.

This only came out in July – and it’s currently in Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment. But the BLCC have published several other Christianna Brand books and some of them are not in KU at the moment so you should be able to get hold of those on Kobo if you want – and they’re petty good too. Green for Danger was a BotW as well and I’ve reviewed Suddenly at His Residence as well.

Happy Reading!