A bonus review today – that’s breaking some of my rules because this is the fifth in a series. But it doesn’t actually matree because this is the first in Lee Hollis’s Desert Flowers Mystery series that I’ve read. Interestingly I’ve read a couple of novellas by this author and one novel in a different series previously and wasn’t keen, but this really worked for me.
The set up is this: Poppy Harmon is a former actress who has been forced out of retired life to become a private investigator and runs a detective agency with two friends. In this instalment, one of Poppy’s former acting rivals has reappeared in her life. Serena has asked the agency to do an urgent background check on her husband to be. It seems easily done – but then Serena is found standing over a dead body holding a smoking gun and the team find themselves caught up in the investigation.
This has plenty of action, lots of twists and is really easy and fun to read. I thought I had the solution figured out – but I wasn’t entirely right and I liked that too. My copy came from NetGalley – and I even managed to read it in a timely manner! Even better, some of the earlier books in the series are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment (although not the first one) so I can go and read some more. I love it when that happens.
Another murder mystery pick this week – but after a forgotten classic last week, this week it’s a new release – and a debut at that.
Grave Expectations’s “detective” is Claire Hendricks – thirty something, a true crime fan and a medium. Yes really, a medium. She can see ghosts and one ghost in particular who follows her around – her best friend Sophie who has been haunting her since she was murdered when they were teenagers. Claire’s been booked as the entertainment at a family birthday party for one of her uni friends’ grandmothers. Except that at the party they find an unquiet ghost and set out to discover what happened with the two least unbearable members of the family to help them (neither of them are Claire’s uni mate) despite some scepticism.
I have written before about how I can never quite put my finger on what makes something with paranormal or supernatural elements work for for me and what doesn’t, but from the fact that I’ve picked this you’ve probably worked out that this one worked! I had a couple of issues with it, but they were minor ones. But basically this is a fun and funny cozy crime novel with a clever set up and a heroine with issues, and who I wished was a little bit less messy. But if this is the start of a series (and I hope it is) they’re minor quibbles that can be ironed out in the sequel.
This is Alice Bell’s debut and it’s already been picked by the Radio 2 book club, so hopefully it’ll be easy to get hold of – it’s a bargainous 99p on on Kindle as I write this, although it’s a bit more expensive on Kobo. My copy came from NetGalley – and I finished it just ahead of its release last week so I’ll be looking for it in the shops in the coming weeks.
This week I’m back with a murder mystery – and another British Library Crime Classic – after a run of more than a month without one! This time it’s an impossible murder in the a Highlands by Anthony Wynne.
The murdered lady of the title is Mary Gregor, the sister of the laird of Duchlan, who is found stabbed to death locked in her bedroom of the family castle. Our amateur sleuth is Dr Eustace Hailey, who is in the grand tradition of the Golden Age mystery, and who happens to be staying nearby when the body is discovered. Despite being told that the victim was a kind and charitable woman, he soon uncovers evidence that suggests the reverse and that the situation at the castle was not a happy one. In fact even after her death, Mary Gregor still seems to loom over the building – and then more deaths happen.
This is definitely one of the more fantastical of the BLCC’s I’ve read, with a strong vein of highland superstition and mysticism. In fact there was a while when I was wondering is the solution was going to involve the supernatural so impossible did it seem for anyone to have carried out the crime. But it does stick to the rules of the detective club – although the solution is quite something, it is just about plausible.
I bought my copy at the Book Conference second hand sale, but this is also available on Kindle and Kobo and is actually pretty bargainous at £1.99 as I write this, although it should be noted that the ebook edition isn’t a BLCC one (there are some of these where the paperback and ebook rights appear to have got separated) so I can’t vouch for the quality of the ebook version. And if you want more impossible/locked room mysteries, I have a post for that too.
Another week, another cozy crime pick. It feels like I’m coming off a run of romance picks onto a run of murder mystery ones. And looking at what I’ve been buying recently, this could continue for a while. Anyway, lets pack Past Verity on the back, because this is the book that I mentioned that I finished on Monday last week and nearly picked then, but restrained myself and chose The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras instead, which was clearly a smart choice, because I read another two in the series last week as well.
So, the set up: Goldy is a divorced mum of one, with an awful actually abusive ex-husband. To support herself and her son Arch after the divorce (her ex is bad at paying child support and she doesn’t want to have any more contact with him than she has to) she has started a catering company. In Catering to Nobody, Arch’s favourite teacher has been found dead and Goldy has been tasked with catering the wake. But at the event her former-father-in-law is taken violently ill and she’s accused of poisoning him. With the leftovers impounded, her kitchen shut down and her ex-husband loudly proclaiming her guilt all over town, Goldy sets out to clear her name and find out what really happened – and why.
This was published in 1990, so it’s even more vintage than the first Meg Langslow and slightly less vintage than the start of the Kinsey Milhone series (which I also love). There is something about the pre-mobile phone, pre-internet era that really just works for murder mystery plausibility. This is also set in small town Colorado and that works as well and is a bit different to California or the Eastern Seaboard states which are where a lot of the cozies I read are. Goldy is a great heroine and I really liked her friendship with her husband’s other ex-wife, Marla. I’m slightly annoyed that the cover says “Goldy Schulz Mysteries” on it – as in book one (and in fact until book four) Goldy’s surname is Bear (which inspires the name of her catering company – Goldilocks Catering, where everything is just right) so it’s giving away a bit of a plot development. But I forgive it because it’s really good – so good that I immediately read book two, and then book four because the series is so old they’re not all on Kindle and it takes a while for second hand books to arrive so I’ve given up on reading them in order for once.
The other thing that this has got going for it is that I really like the recipes. Diane Mott Davidson has included lots of them – not just baked goods but some of the other dishes that Goldy is making for the events she is catering (or just for her family) as well. There are a lot of cozy crimes with recipes and quite often, as a Brit, the recipes boggle my mind. But the books in this series that I have read so far have several that I am interested enough in to think that at some point I might try and convert the American recipes (a stick of butter? Cups of dry ingredients? How imprecise) and give them a go. Which is more than I usually think!
So, my copy of Catering to Nobody came from Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo. Getting a paperback copy is going to be reliant on the secondhard market I think – if you’re in the US you might find it in a bookshop, but I think in the UK chances are fairly remote – the best cozy crime selection I’ve seen recently was the Waterstones Gower Street one – and they didn’t have any Diane Mott Davidson books at all.
I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get around to writing a Series I Love post about one of my favourite series, but here we are. I had planned this for December, but when I went back to read the first in the series again in preparation for this post it started the massive binge that you’ve seen evidence off in all the week in books and stats posts ever since and so this has had to wait until I finished that, because it’s only fair.
Meg Langslow is a blacksmith based in Virginia. When we meet her in book one, Murder with Peacocks, she’s living in Yorktown, but she moves to the fictional town of Caerphilly fairly early in the series where there is much more scope for Donna Andrews to create plots and drama! The first book sees Meg and her notebook that tells her when to breathe trying to organise three weddings at the same time, including her brother’s. The murder side of the book is very good, but also so is the world building which seems Andrews introduce the core of the regular characters who appear throughout the series. There is Meg’s bossy mum, her murder mystery obsessed retired doctor father, her creative but scatty brother Rob and Michael, the son of the dressmaker in charge of all the dresses. As we go through the series the regular crew gets bigger as the world expands.
There are now 32 books in the series, with a thirty third coming in summer 2023, and having reread them all basically back to back, what has impressed me is the consistency of Donna Andrews’ world building. Yes there are a few little fudges here and there, but if you weren’t binging the lot at once you wouldn’t notice them. And you don’t get fed up of the characters, or notice that there’s a formula the way you do with some other series that have run this long.
Looking back, I think that one of the smartest moves Andrews made was not marrying Meg and Michael off too quickly and then giving them a house that allowed plenty of options in terms of plot and house guests. Not every book is based in Caerphilly, but even when they are, there are enough different locations (and reasons for Meg being there) that it doesn’t feel like Meg is the problem (I’m looking at you Jessica Fletcher) or that she’s meddling unnecessarily. And because she has several different professional hats, you don’t worry how she’s stayed in business with all these bodies piling up!
Having read them all again, I think my favourites are probably Owls Well that Ends Well, Some Like It Hawk, The Nightingale Before Christmas and maybe Murder Most Fowl. But it’s hard to decide because they’re all good and it turns out they repay rereading. I’ve already written about a few of the others elsewhere as well – Terns of Endearment in the Cruise Ship post, Gone Gull was a BotW, Gift of the Magpie was in a Christmas round-up as was How the Finch Stole Christmas.
If you want to read them, the good news is that the first one is now available in ebook (it wasn’t when I started reading the series) so that is much easier to get hold of than you might expect for a 20 year old cozy crime book, but the next one after that that is on Kindle is the 9th book. Luckily, Murder with Peacocks is that rare thing – a first in series cozy crime that sets up a world very well and has a good mystery. You can find the link to the Kindle books here, the Kobo ones here and they’re also available in Apple books too. Try not to look at how much it would cost you to buy them all!
Another classic crime reissue from the British Library this week – this is the book I mentioned that I hadn’t finished in time for the Quick Reviews and in the end that’s turned out to be a good thing as it means I can write about it at a greater length here. And I’m also relatively timely for once – as this was one of the BLCC’s January releases.
The author of the title is Vivian Lestrange, the reclusive person behind several bestselling mystery novels. He is reported missing by his secretary – who arrived for work one day and found the house locked up and her boss – and his housekeeper – vanished without a trace. But the investigation is mired in confusion from the start – there is no body and there is even doubt about whether Lestrange really exists. Could the secretary, Eleanor, perhaps be him? Bond and Warner from Scotland Yard have a real job on their hands.
I enjoyed this so much. Lorac has set up a seemingly impossible crime and laid so many red herrings around that you can’t work out what you’re meant to think. And then there’s the humour. As previously mentioned E C R Lorac is a pen name for Carol Carnac, a woman mystery writer. And it’s clear that she’s having a lot of fun at the expense of reviewers and readers of the time who couldn’t believe that a woman could write mysteries the way that she did. It’s just delightful. I read it in about two giant sittings, across 36 hours and if I hadn’t had to get on with my normal life I would have read it even faster! It was first published in 1935 and has been incredibly rare and hard to get hold of until now – which is a bit boggling because it is so good – so thank goodness for the British Library!
I got Death of an Author through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so that’s the only ebook platform you can get it on at the moment, but you can of course buy it in paperback direct from the British Library shop where they are doing three for two at the moment so you could pick up some of the others that I have recommended recently – or potentially through your local bookshop that carries the BLCC series as it only came out in the middle of January so it may well be in their latest selection.
This Friday it’s another cozy crime series – and another from Jenn McKinlay. I wrote about her Cupcake Bakery series about a year ago, and now we’re on the other side of the US with her Library Lovers one.
Our sleuth is Lindsey, library director in the small coastal town of Briar Creek. At the start of the start of the series she is recently arrived in town and getting to grips with her new job and the characters and rivalries at the library. As the series progresses Lindsey gets more and more established in town and develops a group of friends and love interests. Obviously there is also a murder each book – not always in the library thank goodness, because otherwise who would dare borrow a book – but some how Lindsey is always involved enough to start detecting – I mean it wouldn’t be a cozy otherwise, would it!
I’m only seven books in to the series – there are fourteen – because they’re relatively hard to get hold of over here – but so far there’s enough progression in the running strands to stop them getting repetitive (or annoying) and the murders are pretty varied too. I don’t like them as much as I like the Cupcake mysteries, but they still make for a nice comforting read when you need that sort of thing.
If you’re in the US, you should be able to get hold of them fairly easily. If you’re in the UK, it’s trickier because they’re not available on Kindle if you have a UK account. But I think I have spotted them in bookshops on occasion- and obviously Amazon have the paperbacks…
Only two books this month, you’ll probably understand why when you see the stats tomorrow. There was nearly a third, but I fell asleep with 50 pages to go on Tuesday night and didn’t finish it before the end of the month and I do try not to cheat!
Death Spins the Wheel by George Bellairs
It’s been a while since I mentioned an Inspector Littlejohn mystery, as I’ve read nearly all of the ones that are easily available at the moment. But Death Spins the Wheel popped up and it’s a good one. Once again on the Isle of Man, it features an elderly lady who comes to the island to gamble at the casino and then turns up dead. There’s one strand of the plot that I’m wildly dubious about (if you know me and read it you’ll know what!) but I liked the actual resolution and the familiar characters. Maybe don’t start here, but if you’re reading them as they pop up on Kindle Unlimited then it’s definitely worth a look.
Vermeer to Eternity by Anthony Horowitz
Another author I’ve written about relatively frequently, but this is another KU read – this time a really quite satisfying short story with a really neat premise and two interesting characters. If you’ve read the Hawthorn novels, you’ll probably see some similarities to “Anthony” as seen in them, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.
And that’s it for stuff I haven’t already talked about in January – or at least it is unless you want repeats or rereads! I wonder if I’ll manage more than two in February?
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.
I had a lovely week off last week and read some good stuff, but interests of not repeating myself, today’s pick is a book I finished on Monday. Yes I know it’s cheating, but the book is really good so I’m sure you’ll let me off!
The three Dahlias of the title are three actresses who have played or are about to play the same character – a legendary heroine of golden age detective fiction. They’re spending a weekend at a fan convention organised at the stately home the author lived in. But then there is a suspicious death and they have to work together to find the killer.
I mean could this be any more up my street? Honestly it ticks so many of boxes of things that I like: A murder mystery set in a country house! A classic crime connection! A group of actresses! A convention! It almost seemed too good to be true. But it wasn’t. It was really, really good. I was 100 pages in before I even realised it. I really liked the way the narrative switched between folllowing the three different actresses and I think it did really well at making each of them seem distinct. I did have the murderer figured out (or at least narrowed down) but I couldn’t figure out why so it had me partly fooled.
I loved the golden age crime tie in – from what you can work out, Dalhia is a bit of 1930s Phryne Fisher type character – glamorous and rule breaking and with a police man in tow (but written at the time) – and like some of the Golden Age detectives, the series went on being written for many years, although wisely the books didn’t move through time at the same pace as the author! And each chapter starts with a quote from one of the books and it works really well – making you want to read a Dahlia book without really ever telling you much about their plots!
A sequel is coming later this – which is both excellent news and really interesting to see if the formula can work again! I will be keeping my eye out for it for sure.
My copy of The Three Dahlias was part of my post Christmas book buying spree, so I think it should be fairly easy to get hold of in your format of choice.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 