The Ruth Galloway Mystery series is one of the best, most endearing and fascinating mystery series I have ever read. The series follows Ruth who is a forensic archaeologist Professor at a university in Norfolk UK. She lives by the sea next to marsh lands in a lonely cottage and though that sounds grey and dull it is a homely and anchoring setting. Ruth’s character is brilliant and thoughtful with a trenchant POV and her vulnerabilities are common ones that many women can instantly relate to. Her friends are mostly quirky individualists or academics or police (long story that) and not stock supporting characters, their stories are part of the series too. What makes the series so satisfying is it builds on the preceding novels while introducing new characters in the latest book while exploring prior characters back stories, who grow and change and tie both into the current action which keeps the series fresh and interesting. Her writing style is a blend of realism and whimsy and grounded observations together with haunting moody mysticism. Elly Griffiths is a master of building suspense slowly and steadily and alternating it with simultaneous situations occurring alongside each other which form a shifting cumulative narrative picture. It is a well-loved series for me because the characters create an emotional pull which I find is rare in a mystery.
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This mystery is set in a Victorian London swathed in smoggy fog with omnibuses pulled by horses, railways clattering by, steamboats on the Thames, smoke filled pubs and posh squares lined with newly built townhouses. The London of an evolving Scotland Yard when ‘case files’ were considered a novel policing technique and women riding bicycles was considered risqué, when men routinely wore top hats and women perched small hats on their heads and wore elaborate dresses with bustles. The heroine is also a novelty a single woman journalist working on Fleet Street for a daily paper. She is struggling to survive after a career setback and is offered a lifeline by a young Scotland Yard inspector who needs her insider knowledge to assist him in solving the scandalous murder of a famous actress, Lizzie Dixie, whom she was friends with. Penny Green agrees to help only if she is re-instated at her old job and she tries to balance her own sorrow with her desire to find justice for her old friend and Annie, her daughter. Penny’s connections in the theater world gain access for her and the inspector to meet with the Drury Lane theater proprietor Sebastian an early supporter of Lizzie and Lizzie’s husband an overbearing successful showman in the style of a P.T. Barnum.
This is an enthralling British mystery that combines suspense, motherhood, an adorable dog, teaching, teenagers, police procedure, modern romance, witchcraft, a Victorian ghost story, a real spectral legend, stalking, train rides and murders. Definitely in the ‘hard to put down’ category I hated to see this book end. It is a multi-narrator mystery but it’s really Clare’s story, a divorced single mom in her early 40’s teaching English lit at the high school rocked by the murders. The others are a mid-30’s Anglo-Indian woman, Harbinder, a tightly wound Police Inspector with a wry sensibility and Clare’s 15 year old daughter, Georgia, who is a normal teenager except for her active but secret interest in the paranormal.
The latest entry in this long running and excellent series featuring China Bayles, a former high powered attorney who now owns an herbal shop and cafe in Pecan Springs, Texas is all about orchids, especially the orchid that produces vanilla beans. This series always features a key herb, spice or flower which becomes intertwined with the plot in the same way a vine winds around a post, naturally and effortlessly. The mysteries also educate on the history and uses of the title herb, spices, flower or other botanical, and this one features vanilla. It’s fascinating to me since I like gardening and herbs and cooking with natural ingredients so I enjoy these mysteries for their focus on plants and their varied uses, it makes one realize how many wonderful products we use to flavor our foods or use for healing that come from plants.
This series features a Southern gal in sunny California married to a police detective whom she met when she was a cop. Savannah is now a Private Investigator who calls on a loosely knit group of relatives and friends known as the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency to help with research and investigating suspects.
Many cozies have dogs, cats and other pets that feature as wonderful, humorous sidekicks and add heart and interest to a story but in this mystery, Murder a la Mocha, dogs are pivotal to the plot and not just as endearing delightful characters. This is also a very topical mystery and reveals a lot about the American lifestyle.