This year’s Christmas Meg Langslow, Jay to the World, came out this week and it sees Meg investigating a threat to her mother in the run up to hosting the Hollingsworth clan for Christmas. And so it’s an ideal time for me to point you at the post I wrote last year about the Christmas Megs. I don’t think of myself as being a big Christmas book reader, but I do love, love, love Christmas murder mysteries in Caerphilly with Meg. And my admiration for the continuing flow of pun-based titles is huge.
After Wednesday’s Halloween-y Recommendsday, I’m carrying on the spooky season theme with a post on the Magic and Mystery novella series, which I previewed when they came out in July.
My favourites of the six were the first two which happened to include the ones by Travis Baldree and Heather Fawcett who have written two of my favourite reads of the year, which means that’s possibly not a suprise. I hadn’t read any Sarah Beth Durst before though – so I was pleased to see that some of her other books are in Kindle Unlimited so I could try out what else she’s done and see if any of those are to my taste.
But that’s not to say that the others weren’t good – they’re all solid, just not all to my taste in reading. But I think across the series there’s probably something for all shades of fantasy readers . I would be tempted to try something else by Robert Jackson Bennett, but I can’t work out from the book covers which ones might be to my taste. And lets be honest here, my to read pile is already so huge that it would take me years to get around to it so I’ve put a pin in it for now – but if something by him should happen to come my way, I’ve got a marker down now.
I’ve read quite a few of these Amazon Originals collections now – and I think this is one of the stronger ones, although I think Busybodies might still be my favourite. If you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber these are a nice way to pass some time and maybe read some new-to-you authors.
Happy Friday everyone, I’ve got a mystery series for you that has a fourth instalment that came out this week – and I’ve read all four this year so they’re even fresh in my mind!
The French Village mysteries are about Zoe, who moves to Provence to take over a bookshop in a hilltop village because she wants to spend her older years somewhere with books, good food and lovely scenery. The first book was a BotW back at the end of March and covers her arrival in Sainte-Catherine and a body that is found in the church. Initially the locals are hostile to Zoe but as the books have gone on she’s gathered a group of friends in the village who have become regular characters.
The second book, Murder at the Chateau is set in a dilapidated chateau where Zoe staying visiting an old friend when a death happens. In The French Market Murder we’re back in Sainte-Catherine where Zoe discovers a body in an abandoned house during a bank holiday weekend. And finally we have the new book The Vineyard Murder, where Zoe is helping her friend Marcel with his grape harvest when she discovers a body in among the vines when she is arriving in the early morning. But when she returns with the local police officer the body has disappeared. The reader knows that Zoe wasn’t wrong, but she doesn’t and carries on with the harvest and getting to know the other people who have come to work on the grape harvest who are a very mixed bunch to say the least. This has got surprisingly little murder in it until very late on, but there’s still a lot of mystery going on. I think Zoe’s inquisitiveness is at it’s most unattractive in this book – I’m not sure whether you would actually like her if you only read this book, but I did like the way it dug into the personalities and rivalries of the characters. Plus it has some Ngaio Marsh references and I’m a sucker for that because you all know how much I love Inspector Alleyn!
I really love Sainte-Catherine as a setting and the descriptions of the countryside and the lifestyle of Provence are really good. I also like that Zoe is an older protagonist. She’s not retired or as obviously old as the protagonists of the Thursday Murder Club or its imitators but she isn’t a naieve twenty-something and she has a past that influences here. As I mentioned in the BotW review of the first one there seems to be a link to an earlier Greg Mosse series which I am still trying to get around to reading. Book four suggests that there may some sort of romantic thread coming towards us if the series carries on, but I actually thing it probably needs ot have another book set somewhere away from Sainte-Catherine next because there’s a limit to how many murders one small hilltop village can have and still attract tourists! That said, Zoe is already feeling anxious about the number of bodies she’s discovering, so I’m not sure stumbling across them elsewhere is going to help her with that!
Anyway – these are a nice way of passing a few hours even if they will give you a yearning for some good French food! The first three are also in Kindle Unlimited so they’re very low risk if you’re in that scheme. They’re also available on Kobo.
Happy Friday everyone and for the third series post in a row I have a mystery series for you. After current (at the time it was written) with Imogen Quy last week and St Just before that this week (coincidentally both set in Cambridge) this week it’s a historical mystery series – not set in Cambridge!
These are called the Spector Locked Room mysteries, but I think it’s fair to say that Joseph Spector and the police detective who calls him in George Flint are equal leads in these locked room mystery stories. And every mystery may not be a literal locked room (although several are!) but they are so called ‘”impossible” crimes where it appears impossible for the deaths to have been carried out by a human or be anything other than suicides.
Now there are a fair few locked room mysteries in Agatha Christie (Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Mysterious Affair at Styles) but I would say that these are closer to John Dickson Carr’s books. Tom Mead has come up incredibly twisty solutions, that often require a fair degree of concentration to follow as they’re explained, which is not something I’ve ever found with Christie.
These are set in the 1930s – we’ve reached 1939 in this latest one – which firmly puts them in that inter-war Golden Age-esque category of historical mysteries. The other series that has a magician and a policeman working together is Elly Griffiths’ Brighton Mysteries – but those are all post world war two, and tend to be more focussed on Edgar (the policeman) not Max (the magician). The first book in this series, Death and the Conjuror was a BotW in July last year, but I think the fourth book in the series is the best/my favourite – it’s got a creepy mansion that can get cut off by the tide that attracts ghost hunters and people seeking contact with the spirit world.
The first three of these have been consistently in Kindle Unlimited since I started reading them last year, but the fourth one isn’t yet – I was wondering if it would go in when it came out in paperback but it didn’t – although I did pick it up when it was on sale. No news yet on whether there is a book five, but there are a couple of short story collections too that I haven’t had a chance to read yet.
Happy Friday everyone and I’ve got a mystery series pick for you today – back in May I picked The Wyndham Case as a BotW and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately bought and binged the rest of the series and now a couple of months has elapsed and I feel it’s only fair I should tell you about the series.
Imogen Quy is the college nurse at the fictional St Agatha’s College, Cambridge. In fact she initially started training as a doctor but dropped out to move to America with her boyfriend – who was also training as a doctor and had got an opportunity over there. After he dumped her, she moved back and finished her training but this time as a nurse. Now she’s in her thirties and living in the house her parents left her in Cambridge, complete with a couple of lodgers (who change a bit from book to book) and across the four books stumbling across some mysteries.
As the college nurse, Imogen has a good reason to be called to look at a body when it’s found in college, and her role in college means that she sits outside both the students and academics of the college. She has a group of friends which includes some of her lodgers, some of the other people at the college and also a local policeman. The first mystery is connected to a historical book collection held by the college, the second is a half-written biography of a mathematician which seems to be burning through authors, the third is about the death of a prospective benefactor to the college and the final book about the mysterious death of a college scholar who fell while attempting a spot of night climbing. All of them are well constructed and pretty clever – and you can draw your own conclusions about how much I liked them based on how quickly I read them!
As I said in my review of The Wyndham Case, I had been wanting to read the Imogen Quy series since I first read one of Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey continuations – in the introduction to the first one she writes about how inspired she was by Gaudy Night and so I wanted to see what she did with her own Oxbridge college mystery series. And I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t like the final book quite as much as the others, but I would happily have read more if she had written them. Paton Walsh was a prolific author and also wrote novels for younger readers and more literary fiction. She wrote the first two in the early 1990s before she worked on Thrones, Dominations and alongside other things and then are sandwiched between A Presumption of Death and the third and fourth of her Wimsey/Vane novels as the last five books she published.
I picked all of these up second hand – but they’re also available on Kindle and if I hadn’t already started buying them and wanted the set (and as matching as possible!), I might have been tempted by the Kindle editions so I could read them quicker rather than waiting for the postman.
Happy Friday everyone and today for the series post I’m writing about G M Malliet’s St Just books. I’ve already written about her Max Tudor series, most recently back when I did a spy-themed week a couple of months back. But this week I finished the last book in the series I hadn’t read (reading severely out of order!) and so now I can tell you about then.
Our detective is Arthur St Just, a police Detective Chief Inspector and the crimes are Christie or Golden age-esque. Many of them are set around rich families, authors or Oxbridge colleges, or some combination of the above. St Just is from Cornwall but primarily based in Cambridge but Oxford also makes an appearance or two. St Just is a widower but does acquire a fiancée later in the series for some continuity of running characters as well as the fact that is it even a mystery series without a love interest?
It is very much a series of two halves as there was a decade or so gap (and a change of publishers) between book three and book four, and in fact I hadn’t realised that the series had restarted until I saw Death and the Final Cut on NetGalley last autumn. I read that then and now I’ve filled in the gaps with books four to six. And I’m pretty sure I’ve enjoyed these later ones more than I liked the earlier ones. My reviews of those on Goodreads from around a decade or so ago (I read them after having already started on the Max Tudors) are short but very much in the ok to fine sort of area.
Books three to six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and I actually think these are a pretty good place to start or at least test out series. They all have interesting characters, but the earlier books are more in the dislikeable mode than the later ones, and three to six particularly have good pacing and interesting mysteries. Seven isn’t quite as good, but it clearly wasn’t enough to put me off going back for the rest when I got a chance or to make a note to keep an eye for any more appearing.
Happy Wednesday everyone, and I’m back today with another post of first books in mystery series, to follow on from last year’s dedicated mystery series post and to a lesser extent this post which does at least have a non mystery in it too. As you know I’m always looking for my next bingeable series to add to my lists as other series finish, which can go either way (I’ve read – or tried to read – some real dross over the years) but with all of today’s series I’ve read at least one more in the series already.
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
This is the first in a (now long-running) series about Guido Brunetti, a Commisario of police in Venice. This was actually written in the early 1990s – but it doesn’t feel dated in style or the actual mystery, it’s just the lack of mobile phones and references to lire, marks and a character who may or may not have been an actual Nazi that remind you that this is thirty years old. Anyway, in this first in the series, Brunetti is investigating the death of a renowned conductor who dies in his dressing room of cyanide poisoning in the interval of a performance of an opera that he was conducting. I really loved the portrait of Venice in the book (this was written a few years before I visited Venice as a child and I loved that) and the characters are all really well drawn and developed. It’s perhaps a little bit darker than the sunny orange cover and mass market mystery size would have you believe – but not so grim that I wouldn’t read more of them if they came my way. I picked this up in Judd Books by the way, which is a total example of what I meant in that post about discovering something completely new to you.
Murder at the Fitzwilliam by Jim Eldridge
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This is the first in a mystery series set in the 1890s, where our detective is former Detective Inspector Daniel Wilson, who helped investigate the Jack the Ripper murders when he was a police officer. Now retired, he’s working as a private enquiry agent and is called in to investigate after a body is found in the Egyptian collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. As well as a hostile police officer, he also has to content with Abigail Fenton, an archaeologist who cataloguing the museum’s collection and found the body. This is a pretty easy read, there are a few twists to the mystery as the body count rises although I had the culprit worked out relatively early on. I would read more of these if they were in Kindle Unlimited – but at the moment only this one is.
Scot Free by Catriona McPherson
This is the first in a contemporary, American-set murder mystery series from Catriona McPherson, of Dandy Gilver fame. Our heroine is Lexy Campbell, a fish out of water transplant from Scotland to California. She made the move because she’d fallen in love but now, mere months later, she’s divorced and heading back home, just as soon as she clears one of her counselling clients of murdering her husband. This has a lighter and more humorous tone than her historical series – I think it’s aiming for Steph Plum sort of vibes. I’m not sure Lexy is a great counsellor, as she seems pretty clueless about her own personal life but it was fun enough that I’ve read the second one since reading this. How many more I read may depend on whether they turn up in Kindle Unlimited though!
It’s Friday again and it’s not due to be quite as hot today as it has been earlier in the week, for which we should all be very thankful. Britain is not built for 30+ degree heat – let alone in May. Anyway, I hope you’re somewhere suitably shady, while you read this week’s series post.
The By the Book Mysteries are a series of three books about Tess Harrow, a mystery writer who moves back to her grandfather’s rural cabin in Washington state with her teenage daughter in the aftermath of her divorce. Once she arrives there she stumbles upon a real life murder. The first book in the series was my Book of the Week back in December and by the end of that she’s decided to make Winthrop her permanent home. In book two Tess is renovating her grandfather’s former hardware store into a bookshop when she discovers a body and in book three they’re preparing for the opening of the bookstore when the murder occurs.
As well as Tess and her daughter Gertrude, the other regular characters are the town’s sheriff (who looks disturbingly like the hero of Tess’s books); Nikki who runs the local book mobile and from book two onwards Jared, who works at the local logging concern. As well as the murder of the week, there is a running plot about whether the loggers are up to something illegal and a will they won’t they romance between Tess and Sheriff Boyd. These are very easy to read, with some nice humour and enough going on that they rattle along nicely and make for an enjoyable way to spend sometime.
There are three books in the series with the third coming out back in 2023 – a gap which suggests that Tamara Berry may be done with the series as they were published at a rate of about one a year until then and Berry having published two books in a new series since then. And so I issue a slight warning: book three doesnt’ feel like it was intended to be the end of the series and not all the plot strands are tied up at the end it. I’m fairly used to series that I like just stopping at unexpected points so it doesn’t bother me too much, but it would be remiss of me not to alert you. So your mileage may vary on that front – at least I’ve read them for you and warned you appropriately!
I know, it’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m finishing off my espionage-themed week with a reminder of the Max Tudor series of mysteries about a former spy turned vicar. They’re not set in the Cold War, so they don’t quite fit, but they do at least have links to the secret services so I’m claiming they count and I’m sticking to it. I’ve read seven of the eight* books in the series at this point and as it’s three years since the last one came out and G M Malliet appears to have moved on to other series, so this may well be a complete series at this point . As I said in that original post, Max’s prior career gives him a great excuse to get involved in murders, which is always a stumbling block for a mystery series, and the village that he lives in has a good variety of secondary characters to add into the mix. If you want a village-set mystery series, this would be a good choice if you can get hold of them!
*I did try and order the eight at one point and the vendor kept not being able to fulfil the order, so I should try that again because the Kindle version never seems to drop in price.
Given that I binged three of this series just last week, today’s series pick may not surprise you. The only downside to having read three of them last week is that I’ve now run out and read another Elly Griffiths series from start to end and there are No More. Hey ho.
The Brighton mysteries start in 1950, when DI Edgar Stephens finds a body of a girl that’s been cut into three – which reminds him of a magic trick invented by a friend of his that he served with during the war. Edgar goes to hunt out Max for his help and finds him still touring the variety circuit of seaside towns around the country. And that’s how the seven book series gets underway – initially with Edgar and Max and mysteries and as you go through the seven books more characters joining them. Max’s involvement becomes a little less central to the mysteries in later books where you see more of Edgar and WPC Emma Holmes at work – but he’s always part of the mysteries because they are all so connected to the theatre and entertainment industries.
The seven books cover more than 16 years, so a lot changes in the characters lives as you follow them through – but also you see the world changing too: from post war austerity through to the swinging sixties and the changes in attitudes that that brought with them. Brighton also changes a lot during that time – with the rise of TV, the death of end of the pier variety and vaudeville and the coming of cheap package holidays. It’s a great time to set a book – and the mysteries are good too. I think they’re pretty good on accuracy too – I spotted one complete howler* in the last book but it’s the first time I remember finding one of those in all seven of the books, so I’ll let it off. Anyway, these are good very readable mysteries that you can get sucked into reading one after another – the way you can with Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series too.
You should be able to get hold of these fairly easily- they’re on Kindle and Kobo and I’ve been able to buy them in bookshops too.
Have a great weekend!
*a price that would be insane in a pre-decimalisation world – so possibly some confusion about when that happened.
