Tag: mysteries

Recommendsday

Recommensday: May 2026 Quick Reviews

veritywilde

Yes I know, I know, I know. It’s the third Wednesday of June and I’m only just now publishing the May Quick reviews. But I’ve explained my reasoning – I had the early June new releases to cover and then this month’s Kindle offers were *good* – in fact there’s one spotted lats night I ought to mention – the second Nora Breen book Death at the Spirit Lounge is 99p too. But there here now and I’m sure normal order will be resumed next month!

Banton of Paramonth by Howard Gutner*

Cover of Banton of Paramount

This is a photo heavy book looking at the career of Travis Banton who was a costume designer for Paramount and one of the most important of the Golden Age. He’s known for his collaboration with Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard among others including Clara Bow in It. I have strongly mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand I’m fascinated by Golden Age Hollywood and it’s great to find out more about a figure that I didn’t really know much about. However, I think this is going to be one of those books where having a physical copy is going to be the key to your experience and enjoyment because I had an eproof via NetGalley and the formatting on it was a real issue. There were photo captions out of order, stuff that was marked as “a rare colour photo” that was in black and white and just a general jumble at times where picture captions were mixed together with the main text and separated from the pictures they were referring too. This meant that it was hard to follow the narrative thread of the writing because you needed to keep flipping pages back and forth to match up the photos to the captions and to keep the thread of sentences. The pictures are the great gift in this though- lots of shots of beautiful outfits.

Hattie Breaks a Leg by Patrick Gleeson*

Cover of Hattie Breaks a Leg

Hattie is back and after the events of the first two books in Patrick Gleeson’s series, she’s more unemployable than ever. That’s why she finds herself stage managing a one night only play, with a huge cast, written by a first time playwright who is also directing and who seems to have no idea how any of this is meant to work. The good news is that it pays well… the bad news is that alongside this an old friend has asked for a favour and when things go wrong with that she finds herself dragged into some very shady doings. I really like this series and this is a good fun read that I finished in one day. I have a few quibbles – I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced on the favour side of the plot and I had part of the play plot figured out fairly early, but they didn’t really stop me from enjoying myself reading it. The world of the theatre is such a good one for mystery plots – and I love all the detail about the day to day of the behind the scenes that Gleeson includes in this. This is probably best enjoyed if you’ve already read one (or both) of the other books, but it will still work for you even if you haven’t I think.

Major Bricket and the Body in the Bell Tower by Simon Brett*

This is the second book in Simon Brett’s latest series, and I definitely liked it more that the first one -perhaps because I knew what I was expecting when I went in: a espionage-adjacent mystery in a less realistic world than you get in most of Brett’s other contemporary series. This has got a body turning up in the village church on Sunday morning that Major Bricket is the first to discover, and also a threat from his past resurfacing. It’s fun and pacy and felt just more established than the first one did. A nice way to pass a few hours, even if I don’t like it as much as I like (say) the Charles Paris books.

And there you (finally) have it – the May Quick reviews are sorted and just in case you’ve forgotten because it’s so long ago the May Recommendsdays were Island-set mysteries and Cold War mysteries, and the Books of the Week were Blue Devil Woman, The Wyndham Case, Call for the Dead and The Paris Match.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the first Wednesday of the months and I have quick reviews for you – and one of them is even a new release! Two days in a row! Yes, it can happen! I’m almost proud of me. Except for the fact that the rest of the pile is massive. Moving on. To the reviews:

Taylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt*

Cover of Taylor's Version

I’m going to be honest and my most listened to album last month was the new Taylor Swift album. What can I say, I’m a millennial who likes Swedish pop, so an upbeat Max Martin-produced album is totally my jam. And so I was interested to read this book, which is a critical appreciation of Swift’s work, written by a professor who runs a course on her at Harvard. And it was interesting, but I had two key problems with it: one, I’m not a big enough Swiftie that I’m able to remember all the songs off all the albums without going back and listening to them again, and two, I’m not across (American?) music terminology and theory to be able to understand all the technicalities of the music and composition that Burt is explaining. I need someone to play it to demonstrate it to get it – like the Switched On Pop guys did with The Life of a Showgirl the other week – and to really understand the points that are being made. But I think it may well work for other people more than it did for me.

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

Paperback copy of From Russia With Love

This was my purchase in the Penguin Pop-Up back in September and is only the second of the actual James Bond books that I’ve read. I’ve watched the Connery and Bond movies a lot, so it was really interesting to see what the original was and where the plot was changed to make it into a film – and there are a few changes here and they weren’t always what I expected. There’s actually not a lot of Bond here until fairly late on – it’s mostly about the Russian side of the plot, building up to the chase sequence as Bond tries to make his way back to Britain (with Tatiana in tow). As a book it is of its time, but if you’re familiar with all the issues of the movie series, you know what you’re letting yourself in for!

The Body in the Kitchen Garden by Paula Sutton*

Cover of The Body in the Kitchen Garden

After reading the first in the Hill House Vintage mystery series last year, I’m back to report in on the second, because I said that I would come and report back on a sequel if it came. This sees Daphne helping in the renovation of the local manor house after the return of the owner after years out of the country. But when an unidentified body is discovered in the garden, she’s drawn into another murder investigation. In the first book, I had the murderer pegged fairly early on but I thought that might be because it was a debut, but also because there was a lot of series set up going on, so the mystery couldn’t be as complex as a result. But this didn’t have all that set up to do and I had the victim’s identity and the murderer worked out as early (if not earlier). And that’s a shame because I still really like the main characters and the setting. It’s just not got enough happening or complexity for me. Hey ho.

And that’s your lot for this month, as a reminder, the Books of the Week were: The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder; What You Are Looking For is in the Library; Red Land, Black Land and I Shop, Therefore I Am. The Recommendsdays were a Halloween preview, mysteries set in theatres and Novelised Real People II