Jess Kidd’s first book about ex-nun Nora Breen was a BotW back in March, and as I mentioned at the time I managed to get the second via NetGalley and read it straight away. And so to mark the release, I’ve got a bonus review for you today.
We re-join ex-nun Nora in Gore-on-Sea where a famous medium has arrived in town. Doreen Chimes’s séance are invite only and Inspector Rideout has been invited to one. But when the guests are assembled and the séance begins the medium dies and other guests are soon dead too. Nora starts to investigate – even though Rideout tells her not to – to try and catch a serial killer before Rideout becomes the next victim.
I mentioned in my review of the previous book that I really enjoyed watching Nora discover who she is now she’s not in the convent and that process of self discovery continues in this. The mystery is good, but the characters are almost better – with Nora and Rideout bickering, as well as the regulars at the boarding house and Hosmer. The post-World War II setting also works really well, with the seediness and shabbiness of a seaside town conjuring a distinct atmosphere. I really really loved it, and I can’t wait for the next one. My only regret is that I read it in March ahead of a May release – and so I’ve got even longer to wait for book three. There were some characters from book one who didn’t make a reappearance in book two, which I hope means they will pop up again in a future book, because there are certainly some unanswered questions left at the end of this.
I got my copy from NetGalley as I said at the top, but it’s out today in hardback and actually came out on Tuesday in Kindle and Kobo. It should be fairly easy to get hold of because I’ve seen the first one all over the place.
After Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway was a book of the Week in January, I’ve been on a little run of other historical mysteries with a Cold War or spy setting. And as you could see from yesterday’s BotW post that’s now culminated in my finally getting around to reading the John le Carré books I have in the backlog. But those of course were written contemporaneously to the events they depict (pretty much) so for this post I’m talking about historical mysteries – aka the stuff that’s been written recently but is set in that time period. And I am starting to wonder if a 1950s setting is the new trend in historical mysteries, taking over from the interwar period. But maybe I’m just spotting more of them because I’m looking for them at the moment? Anyway to the reviews:
Mrs Spy by M J Rowbotham*
As far as everyone else knows, Maggie Flynn is a widowed single mum who moved back in with her mother after her husband’s death. But she’s actually an MI5 operative, following in the footsteps of her husband whose work in the world of spies she only discovered after his death. But when she is assigned to guard a Russian defector for the day, she discovers that he knew her husband and suspects his death was because he was betrayed by someone he thought was on his side. So she sets out to discover what really happened to him while keeping it a secret from her teenage daughter who is more concerned about whether her mum can get her Beatles tickets. Maggie’s job is mostly observation and surveillance rather than derring do so when she finds herself conducting her own operations it’s a steep learning curve for her. This took me a little while to get into mostly because it took me a while to twig that it was meant to be humourous as well as murderous, but once I did I found this really readable. I liked the references to Bond films and other spy thrillers and Maggie is an engaging heroine and the good news is that this has a sequel out in the summer.
Under Admiralty Arch by S J T Riley*
This is the third in a series featuring newspaper crime reporter Robert Lynnford in the early 1950s. I read the first in the series a couple of years ago and thought that it was a good mystery albeit witha lot of plot but didn’t do the best job at explaining some of the background and details (sort of the reverse of an info dump problem!) but didn’t realise that when I requested it from NetGalley. Still it was nice to drop in again to see what’s changed. And actually there are some similar issues here – the plot is very complicated, with a big cast of characters that can get a bit confusing because there’s not a lot of detail to differentiate them from each other. But the underlying mystery is interesting and I wanted to see who did it. This is definitely going more towards the adventure-mystery end of the genre, with plenty of car chases and more than a few fights.
The Queen Who Came in From The Cold by S J Bennett
In the fifth the H M The Queen Investigates series, it is 1961 and preparations are underway for a state visit to Italy on the Royal Yacht Britannia. But before the trip, there is a visit to Lancashire to accomplish. On the royal train up though a guest claims to have witnessed a murder through the window. The Queen and her assistant private secretary Joan start to investigate and find themselves tangled up in all sorts of Cold War plotting. This is the second book in the series that has been set in the past, and we find ourselves a couple of years after that previous instalment (early 60s compared to late 50s) and the world is changing fast. The Soviets are on the brink of winning the space race and there as spies being uncovered all over the place. So it’s fitting that this is a spy related story – complete with references to James Bond novels and Stephen Ward. I enjoyed this a lot – it’s a fun world to spend some time in and even better (in my mind) now we’re back in the past.
And that’s your lot for today. There was another on recent read that could have been included in this – but it would have been a bit of a spoiler for the resolution. But again, it would be a spoiler to tell you which one! But this is a very good opportunity to mention that there is a new H M the Queen Investigates coming in October called Death on the Royal Yacht which is very good news indeed.
It’s Tuesday again and I’m continuing my pattern of picking a mystery for Book of the Week fifty percent of the time this year! I was going to say every other week, but it’s not strictly every other week, it does go in patches – a couple of mysteries, a couple of romances, one mystery, one romance – you get the pictures. Anyway: The Wyndham Case.
St Agatha’s College, Cambridge has a collection of books donated to them in the seventeenth century. Unfortunately the books are now completely uninteresting to scholars and come with a lot of strings attached. And on this particular morning they also have a dead body lying in front of them. Imogen Quy is one of the first on the scene in her role as college nurse and isn’t convinced with the idea that it was suicide – or that the dead student was stealing books. And then another student is found dead in the college fountain.
I have been wanting to read the Imogen Quy series for a while, after enjoying Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey continuations and during my wanderings post-Word on the Water last week (more on this on Saturday) I bought this. And I’m so glad I did because I really enjoyed it and it was a proper one sitting read for me. In the introduction to that first Wimsey continuation, Paton Walsh mentions that Gaudy Night was one of the reasons why she wanted to go to Oxford and she’s done a really good job in this of creating her on fictional college, this time in Cambridge (which is where she lived). The mystery is pretty good and the collection of students that you encounter feels pretty realistic for the time that it was written (early 1990s). My mum was a solicitor at one point in her life – and she’s done a lot of fundraising over the years, so the complicated bequest of the Wyndham collection was particularly appealing to me as well.
There are four books in this series – and the bad news for the to-read pile is that I know that the bookshop I bought this from has the next two in the series, and it’s pretty easy for me to get back there in the not to distant future! I’m not telling you which bookshop it is in case you get there before me, because I don’t think they’re strictly in print anymore but they seem to be fairly easy to get second hand. And they’re also in Kindle, Kobo and on audio too.
Normal service has been resumed here – I’m back at work after the holiday and once again I’m picking a murder mystery book for my BotW. This was actually a book I finished after we got back from Greece rather than a holiday read – but there are three of my sunlounger books coming up tomorrow.
It’s 1965 and Frances is visiting a fair with her friends when a fortune teller predicts that Frances will be murdered. That prediction – and figuring out who might want to murder her – becomes the driving obsession of Frances’s life. In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to meet her reclusive Aunt Frances at her country estate. But when she arrives, she finds Frances dead. Annie sets out to solve the murder – but can Annie keep herself safe while trying to work out who made the fortune teller’s prediction come true.
This is told in a split narrative between Annie’s present day and diary entries from Frances in the 1960s. Annie is an interesting heroine and knows next to nothing about Frances’s life for reasons that become clear as the book goes on and so also has no idea who the various personalities are that she’s meeting and who to trust. And because she doesn’t know Frances either it means that she doesn’t know how reliable a narrator Frances is. This makes for a deliciously discombobulating time for Annie as she races against time to solve the puzzle of her aunt’s death.
This is the first of what is now three books and the third, How to Cheat Your Own Death, is actually out today which sort of makes me topical for once even if reading this has taken me a year from buying this one to actually getting around to reading it. Which given my track record actually isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things.
This should be really easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it (and the second in the series) in all the bookshops and it’s on Kindle and Kobo as well.
A mini bonus review for you this week as A Death in the Dark, the second book in the Novel Detectives series came out and I have read it already! This sees Annie and Fletcher investigating after the high school’s track coach comes into their offices covered in blood and claiming not to remember the previous evening. When the body of his assistant coach is found, it becomes a murder investigation and Annie and Fletcher find themselves digging into a tangled web of secrets among the staff at the high school to try and work out who the killer is. I had the murderer pegged pretty early on, but there were enough twists and turns going on to keep me guessing about whether I really was right! I like the set up and the characters, although because the series has a running story going on in the background I find that the actual murder-of-the-week is perhaps less complex than other series. However, I do want to find the answer to the long running backstory so I will definitely keep reading them!
It’s Tuesday so so here I am with another Book of the Week – and I’m back with the BritishLibrary’s Crime Classics series this week, making it two (albeit very different) murder mysteries in a row for my picks.
Brimberley is a peaceful village, where everyone knows everyone else and very little happens. That is until the lead tenor in the village choir is killed by an explosion at his house. Choir leader Liz, her son Tim (a former commando) and a retired general are soon investigating to try and work out what’s happened. This was first published in 1955 and the post-World War Two world is very evident here – there are lots of ex military men of various types and vintages who may or may not be involved in the murder – and may or may not still be involved with the military. Some of my favourite of the Miss Marple plots revolve around issues thrown up by the aftermath of the war – I’m thinking of Brian Eastley in 4.50 from Paddington or the food rationing and bartering in A Murder is Announced that mean people can’t tell the police everything they are up to (and also a mega plot spoiler that I can’t explain) – which may be why this worked so well for me despite feeling a bit far-fetched at times!
This was a Janurary 2026 release in the BLCC series and I was pleased to see it pop up in Kindle Unlimited already. I read and enjoyed Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone, Deceased a year or two back which drew on Gilbert’s experience as a solicitor, while this one captures small village life in the 1950s with classic murder mystery mixing with spy thriller in a really pleasing way. I’ve got another of Gilbert’s books on the shelf and I’m moving it up the list now because I enjoyed this so much.
As I mentioned, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which means it isn’t on Kobo right now, but it is available in paperback from the British Library online shop where once again they are running their three for two offer.
I said yesterday that I wasn’t sure what I was going to pick today and it turns out it’s actually a book I finished on Monday. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.
Zoe Pascal has relocated from her life in England to a small village in southern France where she is going to run a bookshop. But when she arrives in Sainte Catherine the locals are strangely hostile and there’s an undercurrent in the village that she just doesn’t understand. Then the body of a tourist is found in the local church – not long after she was due to meet Zoe. Suddenly Zoe finds herself under even more suspicion – from the gendarmes now as well as the locals. So she sets to to try and undercover the killer and the mystery at the heart of the village.
This is a lot of fun, with a really good puzzle as well as the murder mystery. I had a few bits figured out, but not all of it and I really enjoyed the village setting and the cast of characters. I could really picture the historic houses and Provençal countryside. There appears to be a tie in going on with a prior series by Greg Mosse, which I will be tempted to pick up – but there is a sequel to this to read first!
This is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, but it’s also still available on Kobo and there is a paperback too, although as only one of the London Waterstones‘ has it on click and collect you may have to have a bit of a hunt for it.
Happy Tuesday everyone I’m back with the offers post tomorrow, but for today I’m back with in the mystery realm with a book from the to-read pile. I really am trying to reduce the size of that. Not least because the overspill is currently on my jigsaw table and I have two that I got for Christmas that I want to do… Anyway, to the book:
In Murder at Gulls Nest it’s 1954 and Nora Breen has asked to be released from the monastery where she has lived for the last thirty or so years to try and find out what has happened to a former novice whose letters have abruptly stopped. Nora heads to Gore-on-Sea on the south coast and to the very boarding house where Frieda was living to investigate. When she arrives there she hides her connection to Frieda and starts to dig. But when another resident is found dead, she starts to worry that Frieda may have found herself caught up in something even more worrying than Nora feared.
Nora is a great character and I really like the way that she is rediscovering the world and herself as we go through the book. The world has changed while she has been cloistered away and she has decades of habits to break as well. And then the mystery is really good. I think that boarding houses are great settings for mystery books because it’s a way that hugely different people can be forced into proximity and they can feel very claustrophobic. They are also places where there are rules – and rules are something that Nora is used to, just in a different context. Inspector Rideout, who is the police officer that she comes into contact with, also makes for a great foil for Nora to bounce off, but he has depth and complexity of his own too.
This was one of my Christmas books, and there is a second book featuring Nora coming out next month which I’ve already started thanks to the wonders of NetGalley, which just shows how much I enjoyed this first installment. I hadn’t read anything by Jess Kidd before, but it seems like this was a bit of a departure from her previous writing and I’m really glad that she went in this direction because I enjoyed it a lot.
This one should be pretty easy to get hold of – I’ve seen the hardback in a bunch of stores and the paperback is out towards the end of March too. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too where I’m expecting the price to drop when the paperback comes out.
Happy Wednesday everyone and I have a bunch of Edwardian-set mysteries for you today. This came about because there is a new Veronica Speedwell out this week and I have a persistent misremembering thing I do where I think that Veronica Speedwell is set in the Edwardian era when actually is late Victorian and she’s just *connected* to the future Edward VII. Don’t ask. My brain is a strange place. Anyway, the first decade or so of the twentieth century is as popular with authors as the period between the two wars and while nothing is quite like Veronica – in terms of the humour of Deanna Raybourn’s writing mostly – there are still a fair few books for those who want them.
The most obvious books for me to mention here are the two Gabriel Ward books which made my best books of the year posts for 2025. There is a third book coming apparently, but I’m/we’re going to have to wait a while for that – although it’s up for pre-order (and believe me I have pre-ordered it) it doesn’t have a title yet and the release date is currently late January 2027.
M C Beaton was a prolific writer under many pseudonyms and one of her lesser known series (from the pre-Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raison era) are the Harry Cartwright books, which Goodreads helpfully calls “Edwardian Mystery series”. Harry is a Boer War veteran who now helps society fix or solve difficult situations. There are four books in the series and like a lot of Beaton’s books if you read them too close together you begin to spot the formula a bit too much for comfort, but if you space them out more they’re much more fun.
I’ve only just finished The Housekeepers by Alex Hay* but I wanted to throw it in because it’s sort of tangentially related even though it’s not a mystery story per se. This is a heist story set in 1905 when Mrs King has just been dismissed from her position as housekeeper at a grand mansion in Mayfair. She decides to take her revenge, and because of her background in a shady world of con artists and thieves, she’s got the connections to do it. So she gathers a group of women around her to help her carry out an audacious plan to rob the house of all its contents during a costume ball. But as they work to carry out their plan, they discover that the house may be hiding even more secrets than they thought. This was a bit slower paced than I liked, and the comeuppance at the end happened pretty quickly, but I do like a story set in a big house – and the upstairs downstairs of this was good too. I’ve had this on the pile for ages – so long in fact that Hay’s third book is out later this year and I have been picking up the second (another crime caper) and being tempted by it only to remember that I hadn’t read the one I already had!
Lets end with the series that I’ve already written about – there’s the Lady Hardcastle books by T E Kinsey about the widow of a diplomat who makes her home in the Costwolds with her faithful maid and keeps stumbling across mysteries. Then there’s Edward Marston’s Ocean Liner series about George Porter Dillman and Genevieve Mansfield, who meet in the first book when they are on board the same ship and it all goes from there. And if you read middle grade or young adult books, there are the two connected Katherine Woodfine series – the Sinclair Mysteries and the Taylor and Rose mysteries
Happy Tuesday everyone, and as I mentioned in last week’s BotW post that this was in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, I don’t think it’s going to be a massive surprise to you that I’ve picked this for my BotW today, taking full advantage of the fact that even though Hattie Steals the Show was one of my favourite books of last year it wasn’t actually a Book of the Week – it was in a Recommendsday, so I’m not really breaking any rules even though that Recommensday was only in October!
Hattie is a stage manager, who’s currently cobbling together a living by teaching wannabe stage managers and behind the scenes workers and also working at the Tavistock, a theatre behind a pub. The Tavistock’s long time patron has just died, and the artistic director is trying to keep the theatre going by staging a Shakespeare play directed by a buzzy avant garde director. There’s a valuable mask in the mix as well as conflict between the artistic team – but all that pales in comparison to the dead actress that Hattie finds in the dressing room. As the stage manager is the designated problem solver of a production crew, Hattie finds herself investigating while still trying to keep the show on track to open on time.
The mystery is good and has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. And I really, really love all the backstage information that Patrick Gleeson has put into this. As you all know, I go to the theatre a lot but I’m not in any way an actress and the closest I’ve got to being in an actual production of anything was when I played clarinet in the school musical version of Cabaret in my first year of secondary school and was the prompter for the university pantomime in my final year, which is to say I know next to nothing about this and am delighted to be learning a bit more about it. There’s lots of detail here – but it’s neatly woven in and not info dumped to you in the narrative.
This is the first book in the series, so I’m reading out of order – and I know what the issue is in Hattie’s background that means that she’s wary of the police and perhaps not getting the work that she would like. But if you were reading this first you wouldn’t and I think you might find that a little perplexing – however the reveal in book two is worth it. I’m really glad that I discovered this series and I’m not sure I would have done if I hadn’t found it in the Notting Hill Bookshop last autumn because sometimes you need a smaller, curated selection of books to discover something new rather than a massive shop where you can get overwhelmed and end up just looking for stuff that you already know that you want to read.
This is in Kindle Unlimited and suprisingly it is still available on Kobo. And even better is the fact that Waterstones say they have stock of both this and the second book in all of their central London stores so hopefully you should be able to find physical copies in stores fairly easily.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 