Tag: murder mystery

detective, series

Mystery series: PI Grace Smith

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Happy Friday everyone, and to tie in with the theme this week, I’ve got a mystery series set not in Brighton but in the fictional town of Seatoun, somewhere on the south coast within easy reach of London, so you can see why it might fit my seaside-y vibes this week!

Grace is a former police officer, who left the force under something of a cloud, and who now works as a private detective in the town where she used to be a cop – trying to avoid her former colleagues as far as possible. Her career as a PI isn’t really going anywhere – and the cases she gets tend towards the mundane and the ridiculous. Less dead humans, more dead animals or missing people.

At this point it should be noted that I’ve read all but one of the five books in the series in their original late 1990s paperback form. And yes I know there’s only four in the photo (and in two different covers styles) but I couldn’t find a copy of Who Killed Marilyn Monroe on my shelves and there’s a chance I found it on the shelves at one of the hostels that I stay at. But anyway, these days they have been retitled and reissued on Kindle and that’s how I read book three. Now I read these all fairly well spaced out, so I can’t say for certain, but I didn’t notice any major re-working or rewriting between the two versions – just the radical change in title and design.

The new covers look much darker and more thriller-y than the previous ones. But don’t be deceived. Like Ruth Galloway, these are not as scary as the covers would have you expect. Obviously these are books written 20 years ago – so mobile phones are much less common and research is all done in person in archives and not on the internet – but that really works for a mystery series. And as I can remember this era from growing up – and cassette tapes machines, smoking in bars, a time before smart phones – there’s a nostalgia factor here for me too.

Only five are on Kindle at the moment, but they are all in Kindle Unlimited. One of them – with yet another different cover and the original title is available on Kobo. But I have managed to pick up most of these in second handbook shops or book exchanges so the paperbacks are not as hard to find as you might think.

Have a great weekend.

Book of the Week, detective, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Underscore

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For this week’s pick I’m reporting back in with some good news: the new Vinyl Detective is pretty good.

The set up is this: the granddaughter of an Italian film music composer is trying to reissue his music. But because he was suspected of carrying out a murder, some of his masters were destroyed and records themselves are somewhat hard to find. So she enlists the Vinyl Detective to try and track down the rarest of them all for her – the one for the movie where the murder happened. Oh and if he can clear her grandfathers name that would be great. But trying to stop her are the grandchildren of the murder victim…

You may remember that I was a little trepidatious about this one, because I didn’t love the last book in the series. But this was a really good read. It’s got a good mystery, a real sense of the musical genre it’s tackling and lots of food. Plus the extended gang is very much in evidence if you have read the other books in the series. Plus as a bonus for me, there’s lots of action in and around Barnes and Richmond, which are both places that I have stayed in a fair bit in my efforts to avoid the long commute back and forth to London at various points.

I’m going to say this will work best if you’ve read at least some of the others in the series, but it’s also an excuse to post the shot of them all here and to comment on the fact that this book’s cover animal is a dog. You’re welcome. I’ve already seen this in the shops so in should be relatively easy to get hold of in paperback as well as in all the usual digital formats.

Happy Reading

Book of the Week, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Tea on Sunday

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Happy Tuesday everyone. I’m deeply confused about what day of the week it is and messing with my brain as I keep panicking that I’m forgetting to do things/should be somewhere that I’m not. Why is my brain like this? Anyway – to this week’s pick which sees me back with a British Library Crime Classic.

In Tea on Sunday, Alberta Mansbridge has invited an assortment of guests over for tea – among them her nephew, a friend she had fallen out with, her accountant, her doctor, an ex-prisoner she has been trying to rehabilitate and an Italian architect she has been sponsoring. But when they arrive they find that she has been murdered. The house is locked, and so her murderer must have been someone who she would have let into the flat. Our detective charged with working out who is responsible is Inspector Corby who discovers that there are plenty of options for who might have wanted the wealthy, elderly lady out of the way.

This written in 1973 but feels like it’s from an earlier period – except for the fact that some of the guests are of decidedly more modern occupations than you would have found in some of those books, or at least more explicit about what it is they do than you would have found in many of those mysteries. There have been a few patchy novels among my recent BLCC reading – but this is definitely a good one. Lettice Cooper was a prolific author, but not normally of mystery novels but I really liked her writing style so I shall look out for more from her. One of her other novels has been published by Persephone so that may be the easiest one for me to lay my hands on, should I ever get the current state of the pile under control.

Anyway, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and I’ve seen it in paperback in the shops too as it’s a recent release.

Happy reading!

series, Series I love

Series I Love: Dr Ruth Galloway

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I did have a debate with myself about whether this should be a Series I Love or a mystery series or a bingable series post, but given that I read all fifteen books in the series in less than six weeks and kept going out to get more of them so I could find out what happened next it has to count as a series I loved surely.

Ok so first book in the series, The Crossing Places was a BotW at the end of February, but I’ll recap you the set up any way. Dr Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist who teaches at the (fictional) University of North Norfolk. At the start of the series she is in her late 30s, single and living in a cottage in a pretty bleak area of the Norfolk coast that she fell in love with while working on a dig some years before. She’s fiercely independent and the isolation of her house mirrors the life that she has created for herself. In The Crossing Places she is called by the local police when the bones of a child are found on a beach. This is how she meets Detective Inspector Harry Nelson, originally from Blackpool but who moved to Norfolk to run the Serious Crimes Unit. Ruth becomes the North Norfolk force’s resident forensic archaeologist, which means their paths keep crossing every time historic remains are found and and through the cases Ruth’s life starts to change and expand in all sorts of ways, personal and professional. There are fifteen books in the series, which cover about the same period of time – starting in around 2008 and taking us right through the pandemic – which is quite the experience to revisit in a book!

This has got a lot of things that I love in crime books as well as a good mystery to solve – namely a great cast of supporting characters that form a sort of found family, lots of links and call backs to previous books in the series which reward reading in order and a romantic thread with a strong will-they/won’t-they vibe. Now I know I review a lot of romance books and so some of you reading this are going to be romance readers (as well as crime readers) so please follow this * to the bottom of the post for a spoiler-y point that may be a deal breaker for some of you.

As I’ve said, I binged my way through all of these in about six weeks to the detriment of my other reading plans – and it would have been quicker if I could have got hold of some of the books faster. And yes, it gave me a massive book hangover when they were over because I’d grown so attached to the characters and enjoyed being part of their lives. However, I’m glad that I came to them when the series was already complete because it meant I could just gobble them up and not have to wait a year to find out what happened next – and there are a couple of these that end of cliff hangers which would have driven me mad!

I’d read four of the seven books in Elly Griffiths’s Brighton Mysteries before I came to these – and as I said in the BotW for Crossing Places, I think I had been avoiding these because the covers looked like they would be too dark for me. But they’re no darker than the Brighton ones (which I started because I spotted the first one on NetGalley back in the day) and although they’re darker than most of the American cozy crimes I read, they’re not dark-dark. They’re probably somewhere around the Hawthorne and Horowitz and Thursday Murder Club point in the scale, if such a scale existed.

These are really easy to get hold of – I bought several of these from various Waterstones and Foyles around central London when I finished the one I was reading while I was staying in London. Do read them in order if you can because as I said there are lots of links between them. And of course they’re on Kindle and Kobo too – including omnibus editions of some of them if you want to save some cash on buying them individually.

Have a great weekend!

*As you’ve probably guessed Nelson is the love interest here – but he’s also married and if cheating/infidelity is a deal breaker for you in your reading you will not like this series, do not read, do not pass go, do not collect £200 etc.

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 previews

Out This Week: New Vinyl Detective

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Happy new Vinyl Detective week. Underscore, which is the eight in the series came out on Tuesday and I have my pre-order in my grubby little hand! This time we’re in the world of Italian Movie Soundtracks, which is a great excuse for me to drop a video of one of an ice dance routines into this, because there have been some really good programmes to Italian film music. Anyway, I continue to be impressed with Cartmel’s ability to find new genres to use for this series, although I didn’t love last year’s instalment Noise Floor as much as I have liked previous books in the series. Fingers crossed this is a return to full form… If you want to dip back into my archive, check out my Series I Love post from 2022 here.

Series I love post was 2022, last year got a out today.

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!

bingeable series, series, Series I love

Mystery series: Fetherings

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The twenty-second book in Simon Brett’s Fetherings series came out this week – and I am nearly up to date with the series at this point, so it seemed like a good point to revisit them.

Our detective duo in this series are Carole and Jude, next door neighbours, very different personalities but unlikely friends. I really love the groups of characters that Brett creates – whether it’s Charles Paris, his bottle of Bells and on off relationship with his wife, or Mrs Pargiter pretending she doesn’t know about her late husband’s criminal activities. In the case of Carole and Jude, it’s the friction between the incredibly uptight Carole – who would secretly love to be less repressed if only she could figure out how – and the much more chilled Jude who has a more open minded attitude towards life but who has people floating in and out of her life but never really staying.

And the small town life of Fetherings means there are plenty of different locations for murders without it seeming repetitive. We’ve had museums, cafes, stables, tennis clubs, boat clubs and when needed nearby towns too. Accoding to the blurb, In Death in the Dressing Room the murder happens on stage during a stage version of a popular sitcom. Given Brett’s knowledge of the workings of TV and Radio I think that this has potential to be a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to reading it when it’s at a sensible price.

If you haven’t read any of these yet, the first six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which would give you a good sense of the series – and the next six are all under £3. You can find them on Amazon here.

Have a great weekend

Book previews

Out Today: Paul Delamere sequel

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The first book featuring Paul Delamere, Knife Skills for Beginners, was a Book of the Week last year and given how much I’ve seen it in bookstores, it’s probably no surprise that Orlando Murrin has written a sequel. In Murder Below Deck Paul finds himself on board a super yacht with an old friend, but things start going wrong when a necklace goes missing and then a guest ends up dead. I’ve got a copy of this from NetGalley and have got as far as the necklace disappearing and Paul getting roped in to do some cooking – no body yet, but I had a migraine that stopped me getting further. But so far, so good. I’m expecting this to be fairly easy to get hold of because of how well the first book has done – that paperback came out in January with a snazzy new cover and I’m pretty sure it was on the “buy one get one half price” table in at least one of the bookshops I’ve been into since then.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and I’m back with the quick reviews. And for the first time in ages I actually finished all of the books I had from NetGalley that came out last month. Who knew I was even capable of that. Anyway, here we are with a quick round up of three books – two murder mysteries and a romance – I haven’t already told you about.

Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars*

This is a cozy mystery set in the world of drag performers in London. Our “detective” is Misty/Joe who discovers the body of her drag mother backstage at a club night and starts investigating because the police seem more focused on the stolen dress that Lady Lady was wearing. I really liked the setting for this – I walk around Soho quite a lot as it’s near my office, and lots of the locations were familiar to me. I liked Misty and the way you could see how her persona changed when she was Misty compared to normal life as Joe. However they were a little foolhardy/too stupid to live at times. There’s a big hanging plot thread for the next one which I’m not sure about, but overall I enjoyed this and would read more in the series if it came my way.

The Tube Train Murder by Hugh Morrison

This was another new(ish) release – that came out in early January, but that I didn’t spot straightaway. This is a new standalone mystery from the author of the Reverend Shaw mysteries, which I binged my way through last year. This sees a young woman murdered on a tube train, and the investigation taking in the residents or the boarding house where she was living while she went to secretarial college. Those residents include another student at the same college who is unhappy at the progress the police are making. The mystery is good – and the boarding house setting is well drawn. It’s in Kindle unlimited so like yesterday’s The Ten Teacups worth a look if you’re a member.

Book Boyfriend by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka*

I really, really enjoyed The Roughest Draft which I bought two years ago and was a BotW. I was then disappointed and puzzled by The Break Up tour last year – which was the husband and wife duo’s Taylor Swift inspired romance. This is set at an immersive experience based on a romantasy novel, where two work colleagues and sort-of-enemies unexpectedly encounter each other. I was hoping this would be closer to the Roughest Draft than The Break Up Tour, but sadly it’s another puzzler for me. I didn’t understand why the two leads hadn’t just had a conversation to clear the air after their initial misunderstanding, and the heroine was just really immature for how old – and established in her career – she is meant to be. Frustrating. I still have the book that came in between Roughest Draft and Break Up tour on the Kindle waiting to be read and I’m starting to worry that that first one I liked was a fluke…

And that’s the lot for this month. Given how short February is, I’m pleased with myself for even getting to free!

Happy Humpday!