Tag: murder mystery

previews, series

Series Redux: Fixer Upper Mysteries

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Number 11 in the Fixer-Upper series – The Knife Before Christmas came out on Tuesday – and as I said in the Christmas series post, this one getting a hardback release, which is new thing for the series and probably a positive sign for the health of the series. And as I do love a series of mysteries about house renovating I thought I’d take an opportunity to talk about them, especially as this is probably the best of the construction-set mystery series that I’ve read – because (and this is a common theme with series that I like) the lead character is good at her job, and her competence (or otherwise) isn’t really used as a plot point.

Our detective is Shannon Hammer, who runs a building contractors in a small town on the California coast. Over the course of the series she’s worked on all sorts of buildings – as Lighthouse Cove has plenty of historic buildings of various types and Kate Carlisle has been able to invent more when necessary without it seeming weird! Shannon has a solid group of friends at the start of the series and has added a love interest as well – which has been a pretty slow burn, which again I like because it’s annoying when (mostly) heroines are married off fast because authors seem to find it harder to find scenarios to put them into after that point – particularly when kids appear for female leads. The blurb for this one has her working at a hotel in the town who are famous for their events between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The family of the owners are less keen on the festivities than their parents are, on account of their potential inheritance – and then of course someone turns up dead. It sounds like a lot of fun – and it’s a shame that I’ll probably have to wait a bit to read it, on account of that non-matching hardback. Hey ho. I’ll get there in the end though.

You can buy it now though, if you’re a kindle reader or don’t mind that non-matching thing – here are the Kindle and Kobo links. You probably won’t be able to find the book in shops – I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in a UK store, but you should be able to order it in.

Have a great weekend!

mystery, series

Mystery Series: Agatha Raisin

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The 35th in Agatha Raisin series came out yesterday in the UK – and the first nine are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so it seemed like a good time to write about M C Beaton’s Cotswold-based mystery series.

Agatha is a middle-aged public relations agent, who at the start of the series sells her Mayfair firm so she can retire early and move to the Cotswolds. She soon finds herself caught up in a murder investigation – after she tries to ensure that she’ll win a baking competition by buying in her entry only for one of the judges to drop dead after eating it and she has to clear her name. Soon she’s stumbling over murders where ever she goes and gaining a reputation for her detective work, until in the fifteenth book she sets up her own private investigations agency.

Agatha is originally from Birmingham where her parents lived in a tower block in a slum and she has dragged herself up through her own efforts. She’s prickly, she doesn’t really understand the countryside and she hides her vulnerability under a hard shell that very few people actually see through. There is a regular cast of characters alongside her who help to smooth her path – and smooth off her edges. From the local police force there is Bill Wong, who is the first friend that she makes after moving, then there is Mrs Bloxby the vicar’s wife who helps her navigate the village, Roy Silver who used to work with Agatha in London and who pops up from time to time and then James Lacey, Agatha’s handsome next door neighbour and Sir Charles Fraith a rich but stingy friend – both of whom are love interests of sorts at various points.

Agatha is 53 in the first book in the series and has remained “in her early 50s” throughout the whole series – they’re another series that I would describe as existing in the floating “now”* where time has moved on but the characters have remained the same age. Aside from the detective agency development, Agatha’s life remains fairly similar through the series – even if some times you think things are changing!

I originally read the first dozen or so back in the early 2000s, and then after reading too many of them in a row started to get a bit fed up with the formula (see above!) – which I’ve found is very much a thing with M C Beaton books as I have the same issue with Hamish Macbeth but also her historical romances. But as long as you read them well spaced out there’re a lot of fun – as are the radio versions with Penelope Keith. The TV series – which has Ashley Jensen as Agatha – is quite a different beast to the books and I suggest if you do do both then you may be need to separate them off from each other in your head, much the way I did with the Phryne Fisher books vs the TV series.

M C Beaton – aka Marion Chesney – died in 2019, but the series has continued – with book 31 onward being credited as “with R W Green”. I need to read some of the latest ones to see if/how the series has changed at all – the most recent one I’ve read is book 28 (and I’ve read all bar about two of the series up to that point) which probably takes you up until the point where the libraries closed for Covid, because that’s how I used to read them. I would go and borrow some more – but we all know how big The Pile is at the moment. But if you haven’t read any of them, do try the early bit of the series out via Kindle Unlimited.

Happy Reading!

*See also Elizabeth Peters’s Vicky Bliss series in a way, where the first book was written in the 1970s and the last book in the mid 2008s, where the settings remain fairly close to the time that they are written in, but Vicky remains about the same age.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Autumn Chills

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This weeks BotW is one of my purchases while I was writing the Kindle Offers post after I got the sample which didn’t get to the end of the first short story (a Poirot one) and I needed to know who did it! So here we are, an Autumn book read in Autumn – check me.

This is a collection of twelve short stories from Agatha Christie, including all of her most famous detectives among them and with a preface that is a relevant section of her autobiography complete with a poem that she wrote about her childhood. It also includes the original version of Witness for the Prosecution which was turned into a film in the 1950s starring Marlena Dietrich and has been running in a site-specific production at London’ in an actual courtroom’s County Hall for more than five years.

As is always the case with me and Christie (and in fact crime more generally), I enjoyed the ones with the regular detectives more than I enjoyed the standalone ones but they’re all pretty good and I read the whole book in less than a day, which again given that it was a work day says a lot about how much I was enjoying it!

This is on offer at the moment in Kindle, and Kobo. It also comes in a hardback edition. There are also three other short story collections – for the other seasons obviously – and Midwinter Murder is currently in Kindle Unlimited if you want some more.

Happy reading!

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Tour de Force

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Once again my attempts to get another British Library Crime Classics post written is thwarted by picking one as a BotW. Hey ho. These things happen.

Inspector Cockerill is on holiday. He’s already regretting leaving Britain on a package tour by the time the plan lands in Italy, but by the time the tour group make it to a tiny island off the Italian coast the whole tour group is consumed with tension and rivalries. And then one of them is murdered in the hotel. Cockerill believes the killer must be one of the people who was on the beach with him and sets out to try and figure out who is responsible before the local police pick who they think is the culprit.

This is the sixth mystery featuring Inspector Cockerill and was first published in 1955. It contains some of the attitudes to foreign people that you often spot in British books of this era, but the difference between this and say, Shirley Flight – Air Hostess, is that I’m fairly sure Christianna Brand is doing that as satire – or at least for humorous reasons. The actual murder itself is a really cleverly constructed “impossible crime” and there are certainly plenty of people with motives for it. And when the solution is unravelled you see that all the clues were there and you just missed them. It’s pretty good.

This only came out in July – and it’s currently in Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment. But the BLCC have published several other Christianna Brand books and some of them are not in KU at the moment so you should be able to get hold of those on Kobo if you want – and they’re petty good too. Green for Danger was a BotW as well and I’ve reviewed Suddenly at His Residence as well.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Man Who Didn’t Fly

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It’s been a while since I picked a British Library Crime classic, but I’m back with another one this week because it’s really good.

So, four men are due to fly on a plane to Dublin, but only three board. When it goes down in the Irish Sea, there are no bodies and the police have no idea who the man was who didn’t board the plane. And so they turn to the Wade family, who knew the four men due to fly, and question them to find out. Over the course of the book we find out about the dynamics of the household and try to work out who on earth was the man who didn’t fly.

According to the introduction it was the first novel to be nominated for the both the Golden Dagger and its American equivalent – and I can see why. For perspective also nominated for the Golden Dagger (then called the crossed red herring) that year was Ngaio Marsh’s Scales of Justice. The following year it was won by previous BotW pick The Colour of Murder. It is not a conventional murder mystery and I’m going to warn you now: there are a lot of unlikeable characters in this one. But it’s so good. I read it in basically an evening and I didn’t care if it ended up making me go to sleep late. It’s that sort of book.

My copy came from a friend – who left a stack of secondhand BLCC’s with me because her bags were too full – but as with the others in the series it’s also on Kindle and I’m sure sooner or later it will turn up in their KU selection.

Happy Reading!

detective, series

Mystery series: Alan Grant

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I’ve written about Nicola Upson’s series about Josephine Tey, and this week it’s the turn of Tey’s actual mystery series to feature on the blog, because I’ve finally read all of them after picking up the last one at Book Con the other week. Yes I know. Book Con is doing me quite well on the reading front.

Our detective is Alan Grant, a police inspector at Scotland Yard although his cases take him all over England and Scotland. I’ve read these severely out of order and over a period of about 20 years because I’m fairly sure I read Daughter of Time when I was studying my History A Level and doing Henry VII, because when I read it the other week it seemed very familiar. They’re also very varied in the sort of stories they tell – which aren’t always murders, or at least not recent murders. The aforementioned Daughter of Time is an examination of whether Richard III was really guilty of the murder of the princes in the tower and also of how history is put together and how historical myths come into being. It’s regularly voted as one of the best detective stories of all time. Alan Grant is only slightly in The Franchise Affair, but that is a kidnapping and abduction type plot – which is cleverly put together although it displays some somewhat dated social attitudes.

As you know, I love a good Golden Age mystery and these can be pretty good. Josephine Tey is actually one of a number of pen names used by Elizabeth McKintosh – in fact the first in this series was originally published under the name of Gordon Daviot, under which name she was a successful playwright. My favourite of Tey’s books are the ones where she’s using her knowledge of the theatre scene that she was a part of (and which Upson also uses in her books). A Shilling For Candles, about the murder of a film star was turned into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock – albeit with a fair few changes, including the removal of Grant himself!

These are fairly easy to get hold of – Arrow did paperback editions a few years back, and second hand copies of various ages are fairly easy to come buy too. And they’re all on Kindle too, some times in multiple editions at different price points because that’s the sort of age they are. So good luck with that and hard copies may be your most reliable source!

Happy Reading

bingeable series, series

Series Update: New Flavia de Luce

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Yes it’s Friday, no this isn’t really a series post. Well it is, sort of. Let me explain. Back in May 2022 I wrote a series post for Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books, and in it I said that as there hadn’t been a new book since 2019, I thought the series might be finished… but no! After a six year wait, we have an eleventh book, and it came out this week.

A quick recap for those who haven’t read any Flavia (or in fact my previous post about her). She’s still not quite in her teens yet and a prodigy when it comes to sciences, but in most other areas very much as mature as you would expect for her age, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. In this latest instalment, Flavia is still saddled with her even younger cousin Undine, who is desperate to be part of all of Flavia’s activities no matter how hard Flavia tries to stop her or put her off. When a village resident is found dead after eating poisoned mushrooms and Flavia’s own housekeeper is the prime suspect, it is only natural that Flavia starts to investigate herself, which leads her into areas that she could never have suspected.

The next thing to say is that you should not read this as your first book in the series. Alan Bradley writes lovely prose, and his descriptions are amazing, but this has got a lot of threads to it that call back to previous books in the series but also goes in a slightly different direction to the usual historical mystery vein of the series. I enjoyed reading it – it was great to be back in Flavia’s world – although I had to do a quick refresh of where we’d left her as it had been so long. And I would say as well that this doesn’t feel like it’s a final hurrah either. I mean it could be, but there are definitely options.

You can buy What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust on Kindle, Kobo and it should be in the shops too – but as I said, if you haven’t read any of the series before, don’t start here. The others are usually fairly easy to get hold of in bookstores, although they’re now on their third cover style (at least) with this new one so don’t expect to be able to get a matching set…

Have a great weekend everyone!

books, Series I love

Series redux: Campion

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BBC Four showed one of the Peter Davidson Campion adaptations the other week, so I thought this Friday was a good time to remind you about Margery Allingham’s Golden Age series. I’ve re listened to a lot of them on audiobook as well as having read all bar one I think of the original nineteen novels featuring her response to Lord Peter Wimsey. They are dated in patches – some novels much more than others – but so are some of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. If you’re interested in the Queens of Crime and you haven’t read any of these, you should. And you can read my much longer thoughts here.

bingeable series, books, detective

Bingeable Series: Reverend Shaw mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with another series post and this is one that may not be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention to the lists the last few weeks.

These are a series of six books set in the 1930s following a clergyman who, in book one, is on a train where someone is murdered and finds himself drawn into the investigation. And then across the course of the next few books he finds himself again drawn into mysteries and murders of various kinds.

I read the first one of these a few years back and in my BotW review I said that it was really trying to make you think it was a British Library Crime Classic. They’ve updated the cover style since then although when you get A Third Class Murder it still has the original one – as you can see from the photo. It was a standalone title at the point that I read it and there are now another five – some of which are more towards the thriller, some are more straight up murder mysteries. If you have read a lot of Golden Age crime you can spot where some of the inspiration is coming from, but they’re basically very easy to read, enjoyable 1930s set mysteries that are perhaps a little derivative but that are also missing some of the problematic attitudes and language you find in the genuine article.

All six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and I suspect a seventh will appear at some point – there is certainly the set up for it at the end of book six.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book of the Week, books, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

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Yes this is something of a cheat, because I finished this on Monday, but it would have been Sunday night if I hadn’t been so very tired after book conference. So here we are, and let’s hope now that I’m not scuppering myself for next week’s pick!

When an Amy Snowden marries a much younger man, her neighbours are outraged. When she then apparently kills herself a few months later, her husband then disappears. The coroner rules it suicide, but Sergeant Caleb Cluff isn’t convinced. He knows the area and Amy and thinks someone is getting away with murder. So he sets out to find out the truth about what happened to Amy, despite the disapproval of his colleagues.

This was originally published in 1960, but like the Lorac the other week it is another that is really good at conjuring the location and the people and is very atmospheric. It’s also quite creepy – as a reader you’re not in a lot of doubt about whether it was a murder at the start but it builds and builds. Yes there are some slightly dubious attitudes here, but it does all make sense within itself. This is the first in a series and I will look out for more.

This is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so if you don’t read on kindle you may have to buy the paperback or wait for it to cycle out of that for it to pop up on Kobo.

Happy Reading!