Tag: crime

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: The Odd Flamingo

veritywilde

Yeah, I know, it’s only been three weeks, but I’m back with another British Library Crime Classic pick. I can’t help myself but in my defence, this only came out in the summer, so it’s a relatively recent release and it’s also in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so I’m going with it.

Cover of The Odd Flamingo

When Will gets a phone call from the wife of an old school friend to come and help her, he finds himself drawn into a rather seedy potential scandal. A young woman called Rose has come to call on Celia and says she is pregnant, and the father is Celia’s husband Humphrey. Celia wants Will firstly to deal with the visit, but then because he’s a lawyer to try and handle the situation for them. The Odd Flamingo of the title is a seedy club where Will and Humphrey both used to visit when they were younger, but where Humphrey it seems is still a habitue. Will’s staid life is soon caught up in potential murder and blackmail as he tries to work out what is going on.

Nina Bawden is probably most famous for her World War Two set children’s novel, Carrie’s War. This is from the very start of her career – her second published novel which originally was published in 1954, twenty or so years before Carrie’s War. But you can see the shadows of her later work in it, even though the audiences are so different. It’s got plenty of twists and turns and it keeps you turning the pages. The portrayal of the London underworld is really atmospheric and there isn’t really a sympathetic character among any of them, which I liked about it but may frustrate others. I really enjoyed it – I raced through it to see how it all turned out and which particular awful person was going to be responsible for it all.

As I said at the top, this is in Kindle Unlimited so it’s not on Kobo at the moment but of course it’s also in paperback and the British Library shop is still doing three for two again at the moment – so you could buy this and Death in High Heels and get A N Other BLCC for free!

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!

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!

bingeable series, mystery, series

Mystery series: Sam Clair

veritywilde

Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with another mystery series to talk about after I burned through three of the four books in this series a couple of weeks back, after having read the first one ages ago when it first came out and then forgetting to go back and follow up. Which, you know, is fairly typical for me given the state of the tbr pile…

Our amateur detective is Sam(antha) Clair, an editor for a small-ish publishing house who finds herself caught up in a string of murders across the course of the four books. The first book was a Murder of Magpies, where Sam’s caught up in a police investigation when someone decides that they really don’t want one of her books – a tell all about the fashion industry – to be published. In the second book, A Bed of Scorpions has one of Sam’s friends in trouble when his partner at the art gallery is found dead. In book three A Cast of Vultures Sam is caught up in neighbourhood drama when an house being used by squatters burns down and a body is found in the wreckage. And finally in A Howl of Wolves a trip to the opening night of a play, starring her friends from one of the other flats in her building, turns to tragedy when a real body appears hanging from the rafters instead of a dummy.

Sam is a great character – but she’s also surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who really make this sing. There’s her frighteningly clever and well connected solicitor mother, the handsome police inspector, Sam’s goth-y assistant and the various other people who live in the other flats in the converted house where she lives. I love a reoccurring character in murder mystery series and this has lots of really good ones. Sam hates conflict and will avoid (potentially) difficult conversations like the plague and means her relationship with Jake (sorry for the spoiler) the policeman who becomes her boyfriend has some real moments – where she should be telling him things and finds ways to avoid doing it.

Only three of these are available as e-books (although they are in Kobo plus in the UK at the moment if you’re a member there), the fourth is only available as a hardback, which I bought myself as soon as I finished reading book three because I really wanted to find out what happened next. These are Judith Flanders’s only novels as far as I can see, the rest of her writing is non-fiction history and while I’m sure they’re really good and interesting, it’s a shame because these are great and Sam is the sort of character you would like to have as a friend.

Have a great weekend!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Quick Reviews

veritywilde

The first month of 2025 is over and so I’m back with another whistle-stop tour through a couple of books that I read last month that I didn’t already tell you about.

Vanishing Box by Elly Griffiths

Let’s start this month with a rule breaking mid-series book. But there’s a reason for this I promise. Vanishing Box is the fourth in Griffiths’ series set in Brighton in the early 1950s. It’s been five years since I read the third book but my mum’s book club picked the first one just before Christmas and it reminded me that I had forgotten to go and read any more of them. And this is a good instalment in the series. The general premise is that Edgar Stephens is a police detective but in World War 2 he worked in a shadowy unit with Max Mephisto who is a magician. They fall back into each other’s orbit during the first book (The Zigzag Girl) and have stayed there since. This book sees Max performing on the bill of a variety show in Brighton and Edgar investigating the death of a flower shop worker who happened to be living in the same boarding house as some of the other performers on the bill with Max. You could read this without reading the rest of the series, but it will definitely work best if you’ve got the background.

Natural Selection by Elin Hilderbrand

A short story on the list this month – this is an Amazon Original that follows Sophia, a New Yorker who has finally found a man she can see herself settling down with, but who finds herself on a couples trip alone after an emergency means he has to bail on her as they’re about to board the flight. This sends Sophia on a journey of self discovery – the holiday was his choice – so Sophia finds herself the fish out of a water on a once in a lifetime trip to the Galapagos Islands – without her boyfriend, without her phone signal (most of the time) and too embarrassed to talk to anyone about what’s going on. Hildebrand packs a lot into just over 50 pages and I found it surprisingly emotional as well as satisfying.

Not in My Book by Katie Holt*

As I previewed this when it came out, I thought I ought to follow up now I’ve read it. This is an enemies to lovers romance about two writers who are forced to write a book together after they take their classroom rivalry one step too far for their professor to let slide. If New Adult was still a thing, I would say that this is squarely in that area, but it’s not really any more so I don’t really know what to call it. And I think for some people this is going to work really well. It’s being compared to Sally Thorne‘s The Hating Game in the blurb and I think that’s pretty fair, but I think these two are maybe meaner to each other than those two. And that was my problem: they’re awful to each other and although I enjoyed it once they started getting along, as soon as there is any hint of conflict they revert to saying the most hurtful things they can to each other, and that’s just not my thing. Maybe it’s the age of the main characters and I’m just too old for that now – but it ended up being the end of the trope that I find hard to get on board with.

And that’s your lot for this month – a reminder of the Books of the Week from January: White House by the Sea, Deadly Summer Nights, Dark Tort and The Paradise Problem.

Happy Reading!

Christmas books, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Classic Christmas mysteries

veritywilde

Anyway, some Christmas murder mysteries for you today – and did I say I was done with British Library Crime Classics for the year? Ahem. Here I am with a post that’s two thirds BLCC. And that’s if you’re being charitable. It’s probably more like three quarters. Oopsie Daisy.

Santa Klaus Murders by Mavis Doriel Hay

Starting with one I read a while ago – in fact I’ve read Mavis Doriel Hay’s other crime novels, which were among the first BLCCs I read and they are brilliant, but forgotten, Golden Age crime stories. This is no exception. A Christmas set house-party murder – with chapters written by various different character – it ticks all the boxes for what I look for in a murder mystery. It’s well worth starting your Christmas reading with this – especially as it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment.

Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony

So this is the new BLCC release for this Christmas, and features the murder (even if the courts think it’s accidental death) of the host of a Christmas show party by one of the guests. I will admit that I had the culprit worked out before the end, but as far as Christmas mysteries go, this is a pretty good one.

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie

The Autumn equivalent of this was a BotW not that long ago, but I think this winter version is maybe slightly better – at least if you like Christie’s big name detectives. This has plenty of Poirot in it as well as some Miss Marple, Parker Pyne and Harley Quinn and the mix is pretty good. And of course the fact that it’s short stories means that you can read one, and then go do something else – ideal if you’re preparing for Christmas!

Just a couple more from the British Library to mention before I go: firstly Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon – I’m the reverse of most people in that I prefered Seven Dead to Mystery in White, but if you want a locked room Christmas mystery, then this might be it. Then of course there is Christmas Card Crime – book of the week just after Christmas 2021. Silent Nights collection – BotW back in 2015!

Happy Reading!

streaming

Not a Book: Deadloch

veritywilde

Back to a streaming show this week – but not a new one. In fact Deadloch came out on Amazon Prime last summer and I don’t quite know how I missed it until recently. But these things happen, and I have rectified that mistake now!

Deadloch is a black comedy crime series, centred on the fictional town of Deadloch on Tasmania. As the series starts, the body of a local man is found in the beach, shaking the idyllic town just as the town’s Winter Festival is due to begin. Local police officer Dulcie wants to lead the investigation, but she’s forced to work with Eddie, a detective from Darwin who is not happy that she’s been sent to Deadloch. Dulcie used to be a detective on the mainland before demoting herself and moving to Deadloch at her wife’s request and it is safe to say that her style and Eddie’s are radically different. They are helped in their work by Abby, who is enthusiastic but lacks confidence, and Sven who usually gets given the least important stuff to do. As the bodies start to mount up, can they work out who is killing the men of Deachloch?

The working title for this was apparently Funny Broadchurch if that helps you figure out what the vibe of this is. And there are plenty of jokes – although perhaps unexpectedly it gets really quite dark (and less funny) towards the end of the series. I don’t watch shows like Broadchurch because they’re too grim for me and the last part of this was in fact too grim for me! But I did really enjoy watching the rest of it, and I know my tolerance level is low for grim so others may be fine with it. I have no idea how you would do a second series of this, but I would definitely watch it.

Have a great Sunday!

detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: Somebody at the Door

veritywilde

I know I mentioned a BLCC book in last week’s Quick Reviews so it’s two in a week, but I didn’t realise at that point that I was going to read another really good one so soon! Anyway, it is what it is – there were some fun books last week but a lot of rereads or authors I’ve already written about recently, so I’m just going with it…

It’s a cold evening in the winter of 1942. The blackout is in effect and passengers are stumbling their way towards the commuter trains home from London at Euston station. One of the passengers is Councillor Grayling, carrying £120 in cash that will be used to pay staff the next day. But after he gets off the train the cash goes missing and he ends up dead. But who did it? When the police start to investigate they discover that there are dark secrets among the passengers who he shared a train compartment with and that more than one of his fellow passengers might have wanted Grayling out of the way.

This is a really interesting mystery but it’s also a really atmospheric look at life on the Home Front during World War 2. First published in 1943 it’s another one of those war time books where the writers didn’t know who was going to win the war – and you can definitely feel that in the writing. There are lots of books set in the Second World War, but not that many of them (or not that many that I’ve read) where you really feel the uncertainty and fear of the population – that they really didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. There’s no hindsight or picking events because they foreshadow something else or because something is going to happen there (all the authors who send people to the Cafe de Paris I’m looking at you) – it’s just how things happened or felt at the time. The only other one I can think of that does this – although it’s not a murder mystery is Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country – which also has a feeling of uncertainty going through it even more than this because at the end people are going back to the fronts and you don’t know if they’ll make it.

Anyway, that aside there are plenty of people who wanted Grayling dead as he’s not a particularly likeable sort of person and the book takes you around the carriage as Inspector Holly investigates the case and tells you the backstories behind each of them. I found myself having quite strong opinions on who I didn’t want to have done it which is always good I think. Raymond W Postgate didn’t write a lot of mysteries – in the forward to this it suggests that may be his first one, Verdict of Twelve, was so well received that it was hard to follow. I haven’t read Verdict of Twelve (yet) but if this is the less good second novel it must be really blooming good!

I read Somebody at the Door via Kindle Unlimited (which also includes Verdict of Twelve at the moment, so I think you know I’ll be reading that soon!) but as with all the British Library Crime Classics they cycle in and out of KU and when they’re not in they’re also available on Kobo. And they’re all in paperback, which you can buy direct from the British Library’s own online bookshop here. They do often have offers on the BLCC books (like 3 for 2), although they don’t seem to at the moment.

Happy Reading!

books

Books in the Wild: Hatchards

veritywilde

On the same afternoon as I wandered into Waterstones Piccadilly, I also had a very nice half hour wandering Hatchards down the street, and today I present to you the fruit of my trip. Hatchards has been a bookshop since the last years of the eighteenth century and is London’s oldest bookshop. If you’re a historical romance reader, you’ll be familiar with the name as bookish heroines are always dropping in there to buy books. Sadly it does not have a romance section, but it does have some other stuff going for it!

Freddie Mercury display window

It won’t be there any more, because the auction is over but I couldn’t not mention the Freddie Mercury window that they had – as they were selling the auction catalogue book (and may well have been the only place to get it other than Sothebys). Other than that the downstairs is pretty much what you would expect from a long established bookshop – lots of serious fiction and non-fiction, which as you know is not my thing, so I’m not going to bother you with pictures of that. What I am going to show you is their crime section – which while not quite as big as the Waterstone’s Piccadilly one (which takes up the other half of the big front room that the romance section is in) but it is one of the biggest I’ve seen in central London (much bigger than Foyles Charing Cross Road) AND has the added bonus of also having some collectable second hand books as well as the new stuff.

I’m starting with this picture because I know most shops have tables of books, but most of them don’t have antique-looking dining tables full of books – if i was to guess how they were picking stuff to go on here I would say it’s the accessible end of detective, but with some wildcards thrown in . I was pretty pleased with how much of this I had read to be honest – including (but not limited to) The Christie Affair, The Maid, The Grantchester series, The Eyre Affair, The Mary Russell Mysteries, Death Goes on Skis, the Richard Coles and the Richard Osman.

This is the start of the alphabet – it goes around from your left as you walk in from the front – and as you can see it’s got a good selection of the classics you’ve heard of – like Margery Allingham’s Campion series, the long running cozy series like M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth, with the thrillers that are too scary for me and everything in between. And on the end you can see the expensive collectible stuff…

And you’ve got the same mix at the end of the alphabet – including the biggest selections of Maisie Dobbs paperbacks that I’ve recently seen, most of the Nicola Upson Josephine Tey mysteries, some Patricia Wentworths and The Three Dahlias along with a Jo Nesbo that’s clearlyin the wrong place!

As well as being in the right place in the alphabet so to speak in the crime room, there’s more British Library Crime Classics in the classic fiction section at the front of the first floor (you can see the Wodehouse and the Agatha Christie in the background) – including a whole bunch that I’ve written about – including Murder of a Lady, Death of a Bookseller, the Cheltenham Square Murder, These Names Mean Clues and more.

I just wanted to throw this in too – it’s the historical fiction selection – which has everything from Georgette Heyer, through the C J Sansom Tudor murder mysteries and the Andrew Taylor Restoration ones, with all the literary fiction bits in between!

And finally, they’ve also got a pretty good selection of the pretty Terry Pratchett Hardbacks that I’m not meant to be buying but find very hard to resist…

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book of the Week, crime, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Green for Danger

veritywilde

Another week, another British Library Crime Classic pick – and I would apologise except that this is really really good and a new to me author so I’m not really sorry.

Green for Danger is set in World War Two, at a military hospital in Kent. At the start of the novel, a postman delivers seven acceptance letters to people who want to work at the hospital. A year later, he returns to the hospital as a patient, and dies on the operating table during what should have been a routine operation. At first it is thought to be an accident, but Inspector Cockrill is sent to double check. When he is stranded at the hospital during an air raid, events start to unfold that prove that Joseph Higgins’ death was no accident.

This is a really clever and atmospheric novel – enough to make you afraid of ever having an operation again, for all that it’s set in the middle of World War Two and technology has obviously changed and moved on since then. I didn’t guess who did it – but I probably could have done if I had tried hard enough because the clues were there if you thought about it hard enough. As I said at the top, this is the first Christianna Brand novel that I’ve read – having spotted this on the BLCC table at Waterstones in Piccadilly a couple of months ago and waited to see if it would rotate into Kindle Unlimited – which it has. And if they are all as good as this, I’ve got a treat coming, even if this is her most famous mystery. And I chose my words wisely there – because she’s also the creator of Nurse Matilda – which was adapted for screen by Emma Thompson and turned into Namny McPhee, which is one of my favourite kids films of the last twenty years. And not just because it has Colin Firth in it!

Anyway, the paperback of Green for Danger is fairly easily found: in the British Library shop, and I’ve seen it in several more bookshops since that first time in Piccadilly. And as I said it’s in KU at the moment, which means it’s off Kobo for a while, but should be back there at some point.

Happy Reading!