Tag: coastal

cozy crime, detective, Series I love

Series I Love: Maine Clambake mysteries

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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.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Devon and Cornwall

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Did I go on holiday last week? Yes. Did it inspire this post? Absolutely yes. You are very welcome.

Let’s start with the obvious: Daphne du Maurier. There are a whole host to pick from – but I’m going to go for Jamaica Inn because we drove past the turn for it and gosh blimey is the moorland there desolate and creepy – I don’t think I would be brave enough to read the book while staying anywhere near there!

Next up, previous BotW pick 1949’s The Feast – which I think is due for a rementiok because it’s so good. This isn’t creepy like the Du Maurier, but it is thrilling in a different way. Ignore any introduction your edition might have until after you have read it and meet the guests at the Pendizack Hotel in the run up to a fatal cliff collapse (and that’s not a spoiler because it opens after the collapse and then jumps back in time.

Still in Cornwall but written more recently we have Carola Dunn’s Cornish mysteries. As well as writing the Daisy Dalrymple series, Dunn also wrote four books featuring Eleanor Trewynn, a widow running a charity shop in a fictional coastal village in the 1960s. I’ve read three of the four and really enjoyed them. And this has reminded me to try and get hold of the final one!

Crossing the border into Devon, yesterday I wrote about a murder mystery tied to a fictional Golden Age crime series so I would be remiss not to include an actual Golden Age Crime novel as Agatha Christie set a lot of her novels in the county – as she lived there for many years (and her house is on my list of places to visit at some point). I’ve picked Sleeping Murder, because the theme of today is creepy and I’m still traumatised by the cover of the edition of Sleeping Murder my mum had when I was little which features a woman with a knitting needles stuck in her eye. You’re welcome.

I’ve only read a three of Ian Sansom’s County Guides novels but one of them is Death in Devon (book 2 of five) which sees the prolific author and professional know it all Stanton Morley and his assistant on a trip to the county where they end up solving a murder at a boys school. And finally I started with a creepy atmospheric book with moors and I’m going to finish with a book set on a different moor – Lorna Doone. Full disclosure: I’ve only ever read abridged children’s versions of this – and as it’s 800 pages long I’m not planning on changing that, but if you want a classic may be think about trying this story of star crossed lovers on as moor in the late 19th century.

Happy Wednesday everyone!