Tag: twentieth century-set mysteries

historical, mystery, series

Mystery Series: County Guides

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s very, very cold where I am in the UK* and I’m seriously starting to think about starting Christmas shopping. I know. It’s still November. Anyway, after a romance series last week, here is a murder mystery one for you.

It’s the 1930s and the County Guides books follow “the People’s Professor” Swanton Morley around the UK as he writes a series of guidebooks. It is seem from the point of view of his newly recruited (at the start of book one) secretary Stephen Sefton, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who has a slightly shady past. Also travelling with them is Morley’s daughter Miriam. Everywhere they they stumble across a body and this – and Morley’s attitude – makes them unpopular with locals and the authorities alike.

As you know I really like a historical mystery series and the 1930s are one of my real sweet spots for that. And the fact that each book moves to a different part of the country makes for a good way of varying the setting and giving opportunities for new characters to be introduced each book without expanding the core group and leaving hanging threads for the next book.

These are very much in the books where I love the premise but sometimes find the reality disappointing. This is mostly because Morley is set up as deeply irritating and at times Stephen can be too and that leaves you with no one to really root for – you share the exasperation of the locals with these annoying people who are telling them how to solve a murder! But that said, I liked them enough that I followed them through all five books in the series – even though it has taken me a while and they got harder to find.

I got the first few of these from NetGalley, a couple from the library and then bought the final one on Kindle. I have occasionally seen paperbacks in the shops – new and secondhand but I suspect at this point Kindle or Kobo will be the easiest way to get hold of these, although, neither Kindle or Kobo have managed to link the five books together as a series which is both annoying and weird because it makes it hard to give you a proper link to click and so all I can do is link you to the list of Ian Sansom ebooks and tell you that the order is: The Norfolk Mystery, Death in Devon, Westmorland Alone, Essex Poison and The Sussex Murders.

Have a great weekend everyone.

*although obviously as nothing to winter in some places, but the UK is not made for the cold.

series

Series: Vera Kelly

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Breaking away from the romance theme of the last few weeks for something different today. And this series is actually a trilogy, but it’s my blog and I’m not changing my title rules. Sorry, not sorry.

Anyway, to the books, which are about a female spy turned detective and have such great covers that how can you not want to pick them up? In Who is Vera Kelly, we meet our heroine in New York in 1962, where she is struggling to keep her head above water, working nightshifts at a radio station. But when she’s noticed by the CIA she suddenly finds herself in Argentina trying to infiltrate a group of student radicals and wire tap a politician. But after a coup she finds herself abandoned and has to find her own way home. In Vera Kelly is not a Mystery, she is rebuilding her life after the events of Argentina and in the final book, we’ve reached 1971 and she finds herself trying to solve her own girlfriend’s disappearance.

As you will all know by now I love mysteries, adventure capers and snarky heroines and this has all of that and an interesting setting to boot. If you like the Kinsey Milhone series, then you might want to try this. I wasn’t that familiar with the situation in Argentina in the 1960s, so that was interesting even beyond the spy caper and then the all of the detail of life for queer people in America in the 1960s and early 70s is also really interesting. And obviously it has clever mysteries for you to try and figure out. But mostly you’re there for Vera and to see how she manages to get herself out of the situations she finds herself in and how she manages to build a life for herself.

I originally heard about the first book when it came out in the US in 2018 and really wanted to read it, but it wasn’t easily available in the UK (imported only on amazon and not on Kindle at all) so I had to wait until I was in the US for the midterms – which is why my copy of Who is Vera Kelly is a different size to the copy of Lost and Found. And the situation was similar with the second one – until it won the Sue Grafton memorial award (see my comment above about being interesting to fans of the Kinsey Milhone series) at which point we suddenly got the second and third books in paperback and they all appeared on Kindle. As you can see I found the second two in Foyles the other week in the mystery department and this week I found the latest one on the romance shelves! And even better – the first one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment in the UK if you are a subscriber and want to give it a try.

Happy Friday everyone.