Author Archives: sandradan1

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About sandradan1

Novelist. I blog about writing, reading and everything to do with books and writing them at http://www.sandradanby.com/. Come and visit me!

#BookReview ‘A Beautiful Spy’ by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore #WW2 #spies

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Rachel Hore is one of my favourite go-to authors when I want well-written, thoughtful escapism. Her latest is A Beautiful Spy, a pre-Second World War spy story based on a real case involving the infiltration of a communist spy cell. Rachel HoreAt a garden party in the summer of 1928, Minnie Gray is bored. She’s there with her mother who is trying to fix up her up with another young man, when she notices a striking young woman. When the enigmatic Miss Pyle asks if Minnie would consider working for the government, Minnie recognises a chance to escape her mother’s suffocating attention and her boring job at the Automobile Association.
Minnie meets Captain Max Knight, ‘M’, and is recruited as a member of British Intelligence’s M Section with the code name M/12. She moves to London, finds a flat and a part-time secretarial job. Her first task is to attend meetings of the local Friends of the Soviet Union group and volunteer to help. Her new life must be kept a secret from her Tory-supporting family and boyfriend, Raymond.
What follows is Minnie’s progressive immersion in the British Communist Party. Always a self-reliant person, Minnie begins to struggle with the secrecy. Feeling she belongs nowhere, living her life in disconnected bubbles of people who are unaware of each other, she seeks out new friends at a hockey club that she can be herself with. Minnie’s career as a spy has a up and down trajectory, most of the time nothing happens, and she feels she is failing her bosses. But all the time she is cementing her reputation as a reliable, trustworthy secretary and this pays off when she is asked to take secret money to communist supporters in India. Minnie meticulously keeps records, writes reports for M and tries to be nosy while seeming disinterested. As the tension increases and she feels watched, the danger she is risking becomes real and not a game.
Hore added her own imagination to the factual story of real-life spy Olga Gray who spied for Maxwell Knight of British Intelligence and whose testimony helped to convict a number of communists in 1938 for treachery. Using a true story as the foundation of a novel has its advantages and disadvantages. At times the story pauses, for exposition or perhaps because there were periods in the real life Gray’s story when not a lot happened, and this means the flow of tension can seem stop-start.
I really enjoyed A Beautiful Spy. It’s the sort of novel I wish I could find more often. It certainly means I’ll be reading the non-fiction books mentioned by Hore in her Author’s Note at the end.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Rachel Hore:-
A WEEK IN PARIS
ONE MOONLIT NIGHT
THE HIDDEN YEARS
THE LOVE CHILD

If you like this, try:-
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A BEAUTIFUL SPY by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lL via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Big Sky’ by Kate Atkinson #crime #Yorkshire

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I hesitate to express some disappointment with Big Sky, the fifth Jackson Brodie instalment by Kate Atkinson, but the feeling grew as I read deeper into the book. I realize this disappointment is based on my incredibly, probably infeasibly high expectations of this author. Kate AtkinsonI have loved Jackson since his first outing in Case Histories. The darkly comic tone is the same in Big Sky but I struggle to pin down what is different this time. The crime is sex trafficking. The action is told through a wide variety of viewpoints. The cast list is very long and the tying up of ends involves characters I had long ceased to remember. Some of the ends were tied up quickly in the last thirty or so pages.
There are still many things to love. The Yorkshire Coast setting – Atkinson was born in York and clearly knows the area well – is at times both realistically beautiful and sordid. And there are so many rough diamond characters to spend time with: Crystal Holroyd; her stepson Harry; the wonderfully named drag queen Bunny Hops, Harry’s co-worker at the Palace Theatre; and the inept Vince Ives. Jackson has moved to the coast and is working as a private detective on a number of small seemingly irrelevant cases; staying with him are his ex-partner’s dog Dido, and their teenage son Nathan. The story is anchored in the historic sex crimes case of Bassani and Carmody. Bassani is dead but Carmody is rumoured to be about to spill some names. Various people are being threatened. Two police detectives are investigating the cold case and how it links to the ‘magic circle’ but they have little luck in finding answers. Two Polish girls arrive in England. Four friends play golf, and one of them feels like an outsider.
Halfway through, the two sides of the story come together as Brodie is employed by Crystal Holroyd to find out who is following her in a silver BMW. After their first meeting, a warning is left for Crystal: a photo of her young daughter. ‘Keep your mouth shut, Christina’. The first hint of a former life for the expensively polished wife of Tommy Holroyd. This is a book in which the present catches up with the past, where past horrors are finally acknowledged.
I finished this book with mixed feelings. Jackson is still a character I want to spend time with, but the plot this time didn’t work for me. Also I put my hand up to say that, as an East Yorkshire girl, I was bamboozled by Atkinson’s mangling of East Coast geography [which she admits in ‘Acknowledgements’ at the end] which took me away from the page but won’t matter a jot if you’ve never been to Brid. That said, Atkinson is one of our best living writers and Jackson Brodie is not a typical fictional detective.

Read my review of another Jackson Brodie book:-
DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK #6JACKSONBRODIE

And here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Atkinson:-
A GOD IN RUINS
LIFE AFTER LIFE
NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY
SHRINES OF GAIETY
TRANSCRIPTION
… and try the #FirstPara of EMOTIONALLY WEIRD

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge #1HELENGRACE
‘The Art of the Imperfect’ by Kate Evans #1SCARBOROUGHMYSTERIES
‘The Vanished Bride’ by Bella Ellis #1BRONTEMYSTERIES

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BIG SKY by Kate Atkinson https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4Hq via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Crossing the Lines’ by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish #novella

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I read Crossing the Lines, the new novella by Amanda Huggins – whose previous book won the 2021 Saboteur Award for Best Novella – in one sitting. Based on Red, Huggins’ runner-up in the 2018 Costa Short Story Award, this is the fuller story of runaway Mollie and her dog, Hal. Amanda Huggins Fifteen-year old Mollie grows up on the New Jersey shoreline at Atlantic City but when her mother moves to boyfriend Sherman Rook’s home five states away in the west, Mollie goes too. She hasn’t even arrived at Oakridge Farm when she knows she’s made a mistake, and that her mother has too. At her new home she makes one friend, a stray dog. Then after weeks on edge waiting every night for the sinister Rook to stumble in from the bar and rattle the locked door of her bedroom, Mollie hears a gunshot in the henhouse and sees the body of a dead dog. She grabs $20, a road map and a sweater and sneaks out of the house. When she sees Rook’s pick-up with the keys in the ignition, she takes that too.
This is a road trip back east as Mollie faces situations and people unknown, strange, threatening and well-meaning. The driver whose daughter ran away. The store owner whose dog died. The biker who offers her a bed for the night.
Huggins is always a delightful author to read. This story is tightly controlled but her language roams free with some poetic turns of phrase and descriptions that make the emotions, and the dusty Seventies mid-America landscape, seem real. In 139 pages she gives us not only Mollie’s dilemma and the solution she pursues, but the viewpoints of characters she meets along the way and their impression of the girl with the dog. And underlaid beneath it all is Mollie’s past, her friends back east, her regrets, guilt and longing for father Phil and brother Angel. Life, she learns, should be lived forwards. Mollie greets every day as a surprise.

Read my reviews of other work by Amanda Huggins:-
Novellas
ALL OUR SQUANDERED BEAUTY
THE BLUE OF YOU
Short stories
AN UNFAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
BRIGHTLY COLOURED HORSES
EACH OF US A PETAL
SCRATCHED ENAMEL HEART
SEPARATED FROM THE SEA
Poetry
THE COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR BIRDS

If you like this, try:-
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘The End of the Day’ by Bill Clegg
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:-
#BookReview CROSSING THE LINES by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5nA via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Town Called Solace’ by Mary Lawson #mystery #smalltown

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My favourite book of the year so far is also the discovery of a new author to love. A Town Called Solace is the fourth novel by Mary Lawson. The previous three have been nominated for, and won, many awards and much acclaim. I’m not sure how I have overlooked her but I’m now planning to catch-up. Mary LawsonSuch a quiet book with a powerful emotional punch, the story is set in a solitary lakeside town in northern Canada in 1972. It is a story of mistakes made and paid for, longed-for recompenses, the complexities of child/parent relationships and how things can so easily go wrong. Most of all it is about deep love, understanding and forgiveness. Told through the experiences of three people – eight-year old Clara, widow Elizabeth who is seriously ill in hospital, and Liam who appears one day and moves into the house next door to Clara’s family.
Clara has a key to Mrs Orchard’s house next door so she can feed the shy cat Moses and spend time playing with him so he won’t be bored alone. Clara prefers this to being at home because her older sister Rose has run away and her parents aren’t telling her the truth of what is happening. We learn Elizabeth’s story as she lays in bed struggling to breathe, remembering her life with husband Charles and a wrong she committed decades earlier which she still fiercely defends. Liam has recently split with his wife, left his job as an accountant, and comes to the town of Solace to take possession of a house, a surprise inheritance from someone he knew long ago. These three stories are wound together with builder Jim, policeman Karl, library assistant and ice cream maker Jo, and the sullen waitress at the Hot Potato cafe.
Like my favourite authors – Elizabeth Strout, Anne Tyler, Penelope Lively, Jane Smiley – Lawson has the ability to write about complex emotions with an easy style set in everyday situations that are believable, that could be happening to you, or someone you know. I immersed myself in the story, only towards the end did I appreciate Lawson’s deft plotting and subtle management of character. She writes about the ugliness of human behaviour with a beauty that helps you to understand the human dilemma, to look at the whole picture and see the person behind the actions.
A novel to treasure.

Here’s my review of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE, also by Mary Lawson.

If you like this, try:-
‘Summerwater’ by Sarah Moss
‘The House at the Edge of the World’ by Julia Rochester
‘The Last of the Greenwoods’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A TOWN CALLED SOLACE by Mary Lawson https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lF via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Jane Austen A Life’ by Claire Tomalin #books #writerslife

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As a lifelong Jane Austen fan, how I wish I had read this biography years ago. So many details from Jane’s life, her observations in letters to sister Cassandra and comments about Jane by her own relatives shed a spotlight on characterisations and situations portrayed in her novels. Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin was first published in 1997. Claire TomalinLimited by the destruction of so many of Jane’s own letters, Tomalin builds a picture of Jane’s life from the accounts of her family and acquaintances, and of life at that time in Georgian England. The amount of research done must be formidable but Tomalin sets her story of Jane Austen’s daily life against her literary progress, including the times when she was unable to write. She is revealed as having a sparkling and at times dry wit, perhaps more Lizzie Bennet than Emma Woodhouse.  Also interesting is the account of first her father then her brother Henry at getting her books published. On Jane’s death, Cassandra was sole proprietor of Jane’s copyright though Henry continued to negotiate with publishers.
Any writer will be familiar with the reactions of one’s closest relatives to the publication of a new book. The excitement from some quarters, the bemusement from others, and Jane Austen experienced exactly the same. Mrs Austen described Fanny in Mansfield Park as ‘inspid’. It also made me pause to realise that by the age of twenty five, Austen had already written Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. But this was followed by a ten year pause in which she wrote nothing. Only in 1809 did she return to her former pattern of working. What happened to cause this creative halt? Jane’s father retired and so the family were forced to leave the rectory at Steventon; Jane and Cassandra moved with their parents to Bath. Many letters from this difficult time are missing. Tomalin suggests Jane became depressed. She also lacked the physical space and time to write; their lodgings in Bath, frequent outings to the Devon and Dorset coast, and attendance expected at social events, all prevented Jane from writing.
Such is the detail in this wonderful biography that it is difficult to choose highlights. It has made me determined to re-read Austen’s novels now, in the order in which they were written.

Try the #FirstPara of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE here and learn about the first edition of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, first published in 1813.

If you’re a Jane Austen fan, try these two ‘extension’ novels by Molly Greeley:-
THE CLERGYMAN’S WIFE
THE HEIRESS

If you like this, try:-
‘Charlotte Bronte: A Life’ by Claire Harman
‘Howard’s End is on the Landing’ by Susan Hill
‘An Education’ by Lynn Barber

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview JANE AUSTEN A LIFE by Claire Tomalin https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4k9 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society’ #romance #WW2

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I prefer to come to a book without reading reviews so I can make up my own mind. But sometimes there is a book that I missed in its early days but which goes onto be hugely popular. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows is such a book. Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie BarrowsThe story is told in letter form, a structure I admit to having doubts about before I started reading. But the manner in which the letters flow and the information is dripped in means there are no information gaps, no repetitions. It is 1946 and writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man in Guernsey who by chance owns a book that once belonged to her. And so begins Juliet’s correspondence with Dawsey Adams and his fellow members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Dawsey encourages other members to write to Juliet with their own experiences of the German occupation of the island. And so we hear from the nice, and not-so-nice characters.
What could be a superficial account of the islanders’ lives becomes a cleverly managed tale of a community that survives by mutual support, generosity, toughness, bravery and above all kindness. As letter after letter arrives from different people, we build up full pictures of the incidents that happened. Although there is a romantic thread to this tale – the rather full-of-himself Mark Reynolds – this is really a story about the survival of an island community throughout a time of unimagined difficulty.
At first Juliet is entranced by the islanders’ stories but as they write more letters she wants to meet them in person, both to put faces to her correspondents and to scout the possibility of writing a book about their experiences. The book is split into two parts; in part one, Juliet is in London; in part two she travels to Guernsey. The story takes places during nine months of 1946; this feels a tight time span for some of the emotional relationships to develop and at times the familiarity and trust seemed to progress in leaps rather than steps, but perhaps this is understandable post-war when people grasped at chances of normality and happiness.
The title suggests this is a nice, quirky read – and it places it did make me chuckle – but it also tells of brutality, torture and death and the lasting after-effects of war.
I was left wishing I hadn’t read it yet and that I had it to look forward to. Just the book to re-read when your spirit needs a lift.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read why novelist and poet Claire Dyer chooses THE GUERNSEY LITERARY & POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY as her ‘Porridge & Cream’ comfort read.

If you like this, try:-
‘Pattern of Shadows’ by Judith Barrow
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly
‘The Book of Lies’ by Mary Horlock

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GUERNSEY LITERARY & POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows https://wp.me/p5gEM4-47C via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Cornish Village Murder’ by Fiona Leitch #crime #cosycrime

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The Cornish Village Murder by Fiona Leitch is the second Nosey Parker cosy mystery and the first I’ve read, in fact I read it when it was originally called A Brush with Death. Jodie Parker, ex-Metropolitan police officer, and newly single mum has returned home to Cornwall. It’s the week of Penstowan’s inaugural arts festival and Jodie, no longer working for the police, is doing the catering. The festival’s main attraction is painter Duncan Stovall, famous for his Penstowan series of sea paintings. Fiona Leitch This is a story with instant fizz. Written in the first person, Jodie’s, I loved the sly sometimes saucy asides that pull you straight into the jokes, the personalities and the action. If it were an item of food on a menu catered by Jodie, this book would be a mash-up of a Cornish saffron bun slathered with butter and clotted cream, a mug of steaming tea and a glass of scrumpy. Cornwall is a part of the book’s DNA, not just the dialect of the Penstowan residents or the food but the wonderful descriptions of coastal scenery that make you want to get into the car and head south on the M5.
When a visiting author is found dead at the bottom of the cliffs Jodie can’t resist sticking her nose in and asking questions, much to the annoyance of DCI Nathan Withers and the irritation of Jodie’s daughter Daisy and mum Shirley.
This is a silky read, one of the best of its genre I’ve read. A brilliant community of family, friends and townspeople, a beautiful seaside setting, with a witty detective, plotted on two levels. The foundation is Jodie’s life settling into the town of her childhood, a triangular-shaped romantic entanglement, and her burgeoning new catering business. Overlaying this is the case in which she becomes entangled; the art world, not just the creation of art but the finance, promotion, sales and investment.
I particularly enjoyed the joshing with childhood friends Debbie and Tony, including lots of cultural references from the Eighties that are lightly handled without huge signposts saying ‘laugh here’.
Read it and chuckle.

Here are my reviews of other books in the Nosey Parker series:-
THE CORNISH WEDDING MURDER #1NOSEYPARKER
THE PERFECT CORNISH MURDER #3NOSEYPARKER
A CORNISH CHRISTMAS MURDER #4NOSEYPARKER
A CORNISH RECIPE FOR MURDER #5NOSEYPARKER
A CORNISH SEASIDE MURDER #6NOSEYPARKER
THE CORNISH CAMPSITE MURDER #7NOSEYPARKER

If you like this, try:-
‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz #1SUSANRYELAND
‘A Deadly Discovery’ by JC Kenney #4ALLIE COBB
‘Tea for Two at the Little Cornish Kitchen’ by Jane Linfoot #2LITTLECORNISHKITCHEN

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CORNISH VILLAGE MURDER by Fiona Leitch https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lq via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Beneath the Keep’ by Erika Johansen #fantasy #Tearling

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Beneath the Keep by Erika Johansen is the standalone prequel novel to her Tearling trilogy, the first of which was excellent, the second good, the third disappointing. Beneath the Keep is every bit as good as the first novel, if not better. If you haven’t read the trilogy, read this first. It’s a rollercoaster ride, a dystopian story of a country at war, the rich denying the poor, drought, famine, rebellion, cruelty and the hope of a True Queen who may exist at some time in the future. Many names are familiar from the trilogy, many are completely new. Erika JohansenChristian is twenty. An orphan, he was born in the Creche, the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Tear’s capital city New London. The Creche is only one layer of the underground and it is not the worst, in some dark places unimaginable horrors take place. Since he was a small child, Christian has been a fighter. Now he is a legend, unbeaten, still alive unlike the many he defeated. It is a deadly game of kill or be killed. He cares only for one person. As small children he and fellow orphan, now prostitute, Maura were sold together into slavery, together they learned how to survive. Christian is pragmatic, Maura dreams of going ‘topside’, to see the sky and the stars.
Princess Elyssa is heir to the Tear throne but she has a problem. She dislikes her mother Queen Arla and her politics, struggles to perform her royal duties and pay homage to the Church which she believes to be corrupt. Elyssa becomes sympathetic to the secret resistance group, Blue Horizon. As they give food and tools to the poor, Blue Horizon spreads the word about the coming of a True Queen. But as Elyssa becomes outspoken she becomes dangerous, not just to her mother but to a group of criminals including a white witch who can read and control minds.
Meanwhile in the rural Almont, harvests are failing and landowners try to recoup their losses by demanding more money from their tenant farmers. One young woman fights back, and so a rebellion is born.
The climax is a fantastic set piece bringing together all the story strands. I sat up late at night to finish the book. Yes some of it is back story for the trilogy but there are so many twists and turns and new character insights that I surrendered to the ride. If you’re reading it knowing nothing of the Crossing, the Tearling and the mythology of the series, I envy you the discovery of this absorbing chronicle.
In Beneath the Keep, Johansen shows us the underworld of the trilogy. Underground, it is dark, terrifying, dehumanising. She gives us hope while also showing the horror.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of Johansen’s Tearling Trilogy:-
THE QUEEN OF THE TEARLING [#1 TEARLING]
THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING [#2 TEARLING]
THE FATE OF THE TEARLING [#3 TEARLING]

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’ by Katherine Arden [#1 Winternight trilogy]
‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeyemi [#1 Legacy of Orisha]
‘La Belle Sauvage’ by Philip Pullman [#1TheBookofDust]

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BENEATH THE KEEP by Erika Johansen https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lm via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Blessing’ by Nancy Mitford #satire #historical

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The Blessing by Nancy Mitford tells of the wartime romance and marriage of young Englishwoman Grace Allingham and dashing Frenchman Charles-Edouard de Valhubert. Both are aristocratic but from completely different backgrounds. How, you wonder, could this marriage possibly work. Mitford has great fun with the gulf of understanding between the two nationalities, still recovering after the war. Nancy MitfordAt the beginning of the war, Grace’s fiancé Hughie goes off to fight. Despite being engaged, she falls head over heels in love with the flirtatious Frenchman Charles-Edouard and marries him. A fortnight after their wedding, Charles-Edouard returns to Cairo. Nine months later, Grace gives birth to a boy, Sigismond. The war years pass by. Grace ‘lived in a dream of Charles-Edouard, so that as the years went by he turned, in her mind, into somebody quite divorced from all reality and quite different from the original.’ Even when peace is declared, Charles-Edouard’s return is announced and delayed, announced and delayed. Always, there is a gap between expectation and reality. Not all is as it seems.
When he finally returns, he collects his wife and now five-year-old son and takes them to live in France, first at the family seat Bellandargues in Southern France, later in Paris. And now the English/French comedy begins as Grace, and her English Nanny, adapt to French cuisine, foreign customs and the shockingly decadent manners and unspoken rules of French society.
When Grace discovers the truth of her husband’s idea of marriage – including a permanent mistress and various casual affairs – she returns to her father’s London home with Sigi in tow. And now the funniest part of the novel begins. As both sides of the family encourage the couple to reconcile, Sigi is convinced he will benefit materially from having two separate parents, gaining more attention, more gifts and general spoiling. And so he proves himself efficiently cunning in keeping his parents apart.
It took me a long time to work out the meaning of the title, so I won’t give away the secret here. I found the start slow but the question of if and when Grace will realise the truth of Charles-Edouard kept me reading, until I realised I wanted them to reunite. The funniest characters are Sigi – who I wanted to slap whilst at the same time cheerfully cheering him on – and Nanny, who stoutly refuses French food and cooks in the nursery over a spirit lamp.
Written from personal experience – Mitford both lived in Paris and had a long affair with a Frenchman – I found the humour unsentimental and non-PC so perhaps the funnier for that.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of these other novels by Nancy Mitford:-
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
HIGHLAND FLING
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE
THE BLESSING
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE
WIGS ON THE GREEN

Read the first paragraph of THE PURSUIT OF LOVE here.

If you like this, try:-
‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig
‘Stanley and Elsie’ by Nicola Upson
‘Mothering Sunday’ by Graham Swift

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BLESSING by Nancy Mitford https://wp.me/p5gEM4-46K via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Deadly Discovery’ by @JCKenney1 #cosycrime #crime

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Needing a change one day, as I sometimes crave a calming walk in the green countryside, I picked up cosy mystery A Deadly Discovery by JC Kenney. Knowing the book was fourth in a series, I didn’t know what to expect. JC KenneyLiterary agent Allie Cobb lives in Rushing Creek, Indiana where her life revolves around her clients, their manuscripts, taking her cat Ursi for a walk, family and friends. Having previously investigated local murders, and being injured in the process, before this book starts Allie had promised her nearest and dearest that she would drop her private investigating. But when a body turns up in the local woods, everyone wonders if it could be a girl who disappeared twenty ago. As Allie asks questions around town, tensions with the police department arise with suspicions of clues missed at the time of the original disappearance.
This is a different style of whodunnit in that the story is firmly anchored and clues processed in the head of detective Allie. This is a tell-don’t-show style that sinks us into Allie’s daily life and concerns, the reader must unravel the clues from the seemingly ordinary. Of course this is a mystery story so clues, and red herrings, can be anywhere.
Diving into a series mid-way has its benefits and issues. I’m sure I missed lots of references to characters and past stories that would help my reading of Allie’s detecting and understanding of Rushing Creek. From page one a lot of names and relationships are introduced, featured in the previous novels, that I struggled to remember. A character cast at the beginning would help.
Kenney has created a believable small-town world at Rushing Creek where lives, secrets, resentments and loves have been entwined since birth. It reminded me of Charlotte Hinger’s Lottie Albright genealogical mystery series, set in another American small town. When everyone knows everyone else, secrets are not simply embarrassing or shameful. They can be deadly.
An easy, gentle read without a confusing tangle of multiple suspects. I guessed the murderer well before Allie’s big reveal scene, which owed much to the trend of Poirot. I finished it feeling curiously unattached from the people involved, perhaps because Allie dominates the story so thoroughly.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘Deadly Descent’ by Charlotte Hinger
‘Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death’ by MC Beaton
‘Murder at Catmmando Mountain’ by Anna Celeste Burke

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A DEADLY DISCOVERY by @JCKenney1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lg via @SandraDanby