This is a traditional mystery series with a modern heroine, Kate Shackleton, who runs a detective agency with her assistant Sykes a retired policeman, and her housekeeper who acts as a sometimes aide/secretary. What sets this series apart to me is that it captures the essence of a time as the modern era clashes and challenges the traditional in post WWI England and typically features some aspect of the new era, in this mystery it’s a pageant for North Riding Brewery queen and the use of branding as a marketing tool.
Continue reading “Murder is in the Air by Frances Brody – A Kate Shackleton Mystery”
I love this series, it’s a traditional cozy set in England narrated by a transplanted American, Dorothy Martin, a 60-ish widow happily re-married to a retired English Chief Constable, Alan Nesbitt, who lives in a quintessential English cottage in a cathedral town in southeast England. Dorothy is unabashedly an Anglophile and mixes enthusiasm with sharp humor and sometimes tact. She forges ahead in life but this energy is tempered by common sense and her impulsive, intuitive style and outspokenness are softened by shrewdness and the ability to connect random dots into a cohesive pattern. She is also very funny in her observations and descriptions are effortlessly entertaining. This lady has style and it’s not just her hats!
This is a roaring 20’s mystery featuring the spirited Jane Wunderly, a young widow traveling with her aunt and staying at the Mena House, a luxury resort situated outside Cairo, Egypt near some of the great pyramids. It is a cosmopolitan mystery with sharp pointed dialog and continental manners and customs but not stale or cliched because of the fresh and natural objective tone of Jane Wunderly’s narration.
For lovers of Sherlock Holmes, cozy mysteries and London, England this mystery is a match made in Holmes Heaven, I enjoyed it because I love mysteries set in England and cozies plus am a fan of Sherlock Holmes (especially the old Basil Rathbone movies made in the 1940s). This novel is part of a series set in New England but in ‘There’s a Murder Afoot’ English transplant Gemma and her American friends cross the big pond in January to attend a Sherlock Holmes Convention in Kensington, London.
This was the 1st in a new series for Barbara Ross and as much as I enjoyed the Maine Clambake Mystery series this one might be even better, possibly because I relate to the age and sensibility of Jane Darrowfield. As a retiree with extra time Jane gets involved in helping her friends and relatives out of some delicately tricky situations and gains a reputation that brings a paying opportunity to her door. The assignment is to infiltrate a closed community, a senior assisted and independent living community to provide insights and advice to the facility’s manager who is struggling to resolve some troubling dynamics in the community.
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.
This was a multi faceted mystery, one mystery was about a murder, another about a long ago disappearance, another about the Loch Ness monster, guess which one was more interesting! The true star of this cozy was Nessie, I never believed in the Loch Ness monster figuring it was folklore but after reading this book I am not so sure! If you like books set in Scotland, featuring bookstores with quirky Scottish burrs dialogue you will really enjoy this fantastical mystery. To anchor it somewhat to reality it also feature an upcoming wedding, problems with the wedding dress, meeting the in-laws moments and vetting the venue. Other than that it is a mystery inside a mystery inside a mystery.
This mystery is a World War 2 expose of the risks, perils and bravery of the SOE agents who were made prisoners by their own organization because they were considered to be security risks and compromised and couldn’t be allowed back into the field or released from duty. Though it’s fiction the rules and premises are real and it could have happened – perhaps not as dramatically – but very plausible.
Medieval mysteries have long been a favorite of mine because the atmosphere invokes a time and place so different from modern life with its open society, comfortable, consumer oriented lifestyles, its a window into a much darker age of barons, abbeys, feuding lords, robbers, struggling serfs and towns folk. This series focuses on the fiefdoms of religion during that time when abbeys, monasteries, churches, hospitals and schools were all religious institutions and provided hope and comfort. It’s the 12th in the Abbess of Mieux series and features Hildegard, an understanding, competent nun determined to successfully complete her penance by going on a mission to a northern English Benedectine monastry during the Twelve Days of Christmas holidays in 1389 during the troubled reign of King Richard.