Tag Archives: crime fiction

#BookReview ‘A Medal for Murder’ by Frances Brody @FrancesBrody #cosycrime

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I started reading the Kate Shackleton series of 1920s detective novels in the wrong order, so I’ve gone back to the beginning. A Medal for Murder is the second Kate book by Frances Brody. With flashbacks to the 1899 Boer War, it adds layer upon layer to the puzzles faced by Kate. Frances Brody 1922. Harrogate is a genteel city, a night at the theatre, a visit to a friend. But Kate Shackleton’s visit to her director friend doesn’t go to plan when on the last night of the play, a wealthy local businessman is found dead, a dagger in his chest.
Drawn to the spa town as part of an investigation into robbery at a Leeds pawn shop, Kate finds herself instead following clues to find the murderer. Everyone in Harrogate seems polite, helpful, thoughtful, concerned about the murder, ready to help. But are they really being helpful or trying to distract the investigation? Kate, who has stayed the night with her theatre producer friend Meriel, is asked for help from another source. Meriel’s landlord, elderly Captain Wolfendale, has received a ransom note. His grand-daughter Lucy, a budding actress, has been kidnapped. The note warns not to alert the police and so the captain asks for Kate’s help. As Kate’s three unrelated cases – theft, murder, kidnap – keep overlapping, she begins to wonder if everyone is acting a role. Is anyone telling her the truth? Where is Lucy, has she been kidnapped or is she hiding from someone. And why is the captain’s war experience significant?
A Medal for Murder starts slowly and builds the tension gradually. But the twist, when it comes, will take your breath away. I didn’t see it coming at all. Brody has a wonderful talent for misleading the reader, laying false clues and real ones, that keep you guessing for so long. Kate Shackleton is a very likeable protagonist, an independent woman making her own life post-Great War, shaped by her wartime experiences. Now a professional detective, Kate must consider the moral question: is a thief always a thief, or can there be mitigating factors that excuse or explain guilt? Harrogate, a beautiful spa town, is a worthy character in its own right.
Next in the series is Murder in the Afternoon.

Read my reviews of these other Kate Shackleton novels:-
DYING IN THE WOOL #1KATESHACKLETON … read the #FirstPara HERE.
A DEATH IN THE DALES #7KATESHACKLETON
A SNAPSHOT OF MURDER #10KATESHACKLETON
DEATH AND THE BREWERY QUEEN #12KATESHACKLETON
A MANSION FOR MURDER #13KATESHACKLETON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Various Haunts of Men’ by Susan Hill #1SIMONSERRAILLER
‘A Rising Man’ by Abir Mukherjee #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
‘Murder Under her Skin’ by Steven Spotswood #2PENTECOST&PARKER 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A MEDAL FOR MURDER by Frances Brody @FrancesBrody https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Zq via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Toby Clements

#BookReview ‘The Monogram Murders’ by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 #crime #mystery #Poirot

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1920s London. A certain Belgian detective is drinking his beverage at Pleasant’s Coffee House when he becomes intrigued by a distressed customer. She is in fear for her life and confides to him, ‘Once I am dead, justice will be done.’ The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah is the first of her official Agatha Christie Poirot continuation novels. Sophie Hannah Poirot, who is taking a mini-holiday not far from home – in order to refresh his little grey cells – later discusses this strange conversation with a fellow guest at Mrs Blanche Unsworth’s boarding house. Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool is 32 years old and somewhat in awe of his new friend. When a murder occurs, it is not Jennie Hobbs from the coffee shop who is dead but three strangers in the fashionable Bloxham Hotel. There is a florid Italian hotel manager, a coffee shop assistant who sees everything, and a glamorous portrait artist who paints glamorous people. The investigation leads the unlikely duo to a village in Devon, home of the three victims, where the puzzle becomes even more puzzling and more potential villains are identified. There is bitterness and revenge, jealousy and moral certitude, love and obsession.
I enjoyed watching the growing relationship, professional and practical, between the finickety Belgian and the cautious, quiet Englishman, and their differing ways of unlocking the same puzzle. Catchpool, who is fond of crosswords, is a literal kind of man and often struggles to see the clues that seem so obvious to Poirot. Poirot, always attuned to emotions, despairs of Catchpool’s lack of imagination.
I’ve loved Agatha Christie’s Marple and Poirot books all my life, including the films and audiobooks, and so was unsure about reading a continuation novel. The Monogram Murders was a little slow to get moving but from halfway through I stopped making comparisons with Christie and just enjoyed the story. This is a complex plot with a tangled history, talented liars and closed room murders.
The next book in the series is Closed Casket.

And here are my reviews of other Poirot books by Sophie Hannah:-
THE MYSTERY OF THREE QUARTERS #3POIROT
THE KILLINGS AT KINGFISHER HILL #4POIROT

If you like this, try:-
‘A Very English Murder’ by Verity Bright #1LADYELEANORSWIFT
‘Murder at the Dolphin Hotel’ by Helena Dixon #1MISSUNDERHAY
‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood #1PENTECOST&PARKER

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MONOGRAM MURDERS by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Xf via @Sandra Danby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Philip Pullman

#BookReview ‘The Queen of Poisons’ by Robert Thorogood #cosycrime

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A poisoned coffee capsule. A blackmail letter. An anonymous tip-off. The Queen of Poisons by Robert Thorogood starts with a death at a council planning meeting. Hardly a probable setting for a murder, of course it must be an accidental death. But of course it isn’t. Robert ThorogoodThe Marlow Murder Club are amateur sleuths who help the police by digging the dirt in a town that is picturesque, community-minded and wealthy; but scratch the surface and things are not as pretty as they seem. In this, the third tale in Thorogood’s series, the trio of amateur detectives, Judith, Becks and Suzie, are now very familiar to readers. So when each of the behaves in an unusual way, it attracts attention. Becks seemingly doesn’t want to go home. Judith is drinking more whisky than usual and is throwing unopened letters on the fire. Suzie has suddenly got interested in the local planning process and it is Suzie who witnesses the dodgy death. Judith is at the heart of everything, as a crossword setter she has a suitably agile mind, and her home is the location for their incident room.
For what seems ages the women discover nothing resembling a proper clue, just bitty things all quite unrelated, until with some clever reasoning, brave flights of fancy and inspired questioning, the hidden connections begin to appear. Yes, I suspected the actual killer early on in the story but had forgotten this by Judith’s declaration in the last pages. The twisty plot is amplified by lots of red herrings, the visit of Becks’s difficult-to-handle mother-in-law and a romantic entanglement for Judith.
Next in the series is Murder on the Marlow Belle.

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB #1MARLOWMURDERCLUB
DEATH COMES TO MARLOW #2MARLOWMURDERCLUB

… and my reviews of the Death in Paradise series:-
A MEDITATION ON MURDER #1DEATHINPARADISE
THE KILLING OF POLLY CARTER #2DEATHINPARADISE

If you like this, try:-
‘Death on Deck’ by Verity Bright #13LADYELEANORSWIFT
‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by Sophie Hannah #4POIROT
‘The Silver Bone’ by Andrey Kurkov #1KYIVMYSTERIES

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUEEN OF POISONS by Robert Thorogood https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8YV via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Fiona Valpy

#BookReview ‘The Shadows of Men’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

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Calcutta 1923. The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee, fifth in the excellent Raj-era crime series, begins four years after the first book. A lot has happened in Calcutta since 1919, India is evolving as the power balance changes and the country edges towards the end of British rule. And the relationship between the two policemen is shifting too. Abir MukherjeeIt is significant that The Shadows of Men switches narrator back and forth between Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee, and that the first chapter begins with Suren. With Gandhi in prison, the independence movement is fighting internally, local elections have enforced divisions between Hindus and Moslims, high caste and low caste, landowners and peasants, neighbour against neighbour, gangster against gangster. Unknown to Sam, police commissioner Lord Taggart orders Suren to follow a visiting muslim politician. And then Suren is arrested for murder.
Unsure who to trust, Sam must identify the real murderer to clear Suren’s name. What follows is a search for the truth, a chase west across India from Calcutta to Bombay. At risk is not only a temporary calming in Calcutta, which is a powder keg waiting to explode, but also the fate of Indian politics. Will Suren hang for murder. Can Sam unravel the tangled clues to find who is killing who. And is there a traitor at police headquarters.
In this book, Suren is given his voice and we see for the first time the depth of his passion for his country, his pride in being a policeman, and the red lines he will not cross.
What an excellent series this is. A rollercoaster of a novel with a cliffhanger ending that was most unexpected. Next is The Burning Grounds.

Here are my reviews of the first four books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A RISING MAN #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
SMOKE AND ASHES #3WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
DEATH IN THE EAST #4WYNDHAM&BANERJEE 
THE BURNING GROUNDS #6WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

And a standalone contemporary thriller:-
THE PINNACLE

If you like this, try:-
‘Darktown’ by Thomas Mullen
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson
‘The Killing Lessons’ by Saul Black

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SHADOWS OF MEN by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8J7 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Helena Dixon

#BookReview ‘Death in the East’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

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Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee begins as Sam Wyndham, police captain and opium-addict, is on his way to Assam to dry out at an ashram when at a railway station he sees a man he thought was dead. And so begins a two-tier murder mystery dating back to Wyndham’s time as a London policeman before the Great War. Abir MukherjeeThe story alternates between Wyndham’s detoxification in 1922 and 1905 when he was a young constable. That was the last time he saw the dead man. The detoxification procedure at the ashram is brutal and haunted by the sighting of a man he thought dead, Sam’s withdrawal symptoms worsen. The present day merges with 1905 when a young woman was murdered in the East End of London and Sam begins to distrust his ability as a policeman. Is someone telling the truth, or lying. Is the death suspicious, or of natural causes. Should he investigate, or keep quiet.
Isolated in a hillside village without transport, Wyndham is five miles from back-up at the nearest Indian thana and 70 miles away from the district superintendent. He must take the decisions, and action, himself. When the body of a fellow addict is found in a stream, Wyndham trusts his instincts that something is wrong in Jatinga. A telegram sent to his assistant in Calcutta is sent without hope or expectation of a quick reply. Wyndham is on his own, physically weak from his purgative treatment, stepping fawn-like into his post-addiction life, unsure that his instinct for reading people is working. This provides a neat parallel with his youthful self in 1905 when, determined to uphold the rule of law, he is impatient with protocol, healthy, full of energy and a sense of justice. So when Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee finally arrives in Jatinga it seems fitting when he surveys the scene and comments, ‘I have noticed… that wherever you go, people tend to die.’
I missed the presence of Sergeant Banerjee throughout this novel, underlining for me that the inter-play between these two policemen is the delight of these books. The character arcs of Wyndham and Banerjee have moved on since the first novel as the relationship between the sahibs and Indians has also altered. Death in the East is fourth in the Wyndham & Banerjee series, next is The Shadows of Men. The trajectory of the two police officers, set within the changing parameters of power and justice in Raj-ruled India, promises much for the rest of the series.

Here are my reviews of the first three books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A RISING MAN #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
SMOKE AND ASHES #3WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE SHADOWS OF MEN #5WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE BURNING GROUNDS #6WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

And a standalone contemporary thriller:-
THE PINNACLE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Vows of Silence’ by Susan Hill #4SIMONSERRAILLER
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James #1ROYGRACE
‘The Diabolical Bones’ by Bella Ellis #2BRONTEMYSTERIES

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEATH IN THE EAST by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8GB via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Alys Clare

#BookReview ‘The Silver Bone’ by Andrey Kurkov #crime #Ukraine

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Providing a glimpse into 1919 Kyiv during the four-year Ukrainian-Soviet war, The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov cleverly mixes a detective story with magical realism. Andrey KurkovAfter the death of his father, in an incident in which Samson Kolechko has his ear cut off by a Cossack soldier, the young man must adapt to life alone. But he isn’t alone for long. First, two Russian soldiers are billeted in his flat; second, items of his furniture are requisitioned. In search of his father’s desk – not just for its emotional significance but also because his severed ear rests in a tin in the desk drawer – Samson goes to the local police station to demand the desk’s return. Instead, he finds himself employed – without salary but with food vouchers, a uniform and a gun – as a detective. Receiving a course in marksmanship, but no training in criminal investigation, Samson begins his new job.
It turns out that his two lodgers are also thieves. When they go on the run, Samson gives chase. What follows includes a tailor, a silver bone and a suit for a person of unusual proportions. Some of this is quite surreal but hugely enjoyable, woven into the dour poverty, dirt and deprivation of wartime Kyiv. Despite being an untrained policeman, Samson is curious, writes excellent reports and takes action on assumptions rather than fact. This is an anarchic, funny, clever novel that doesn’t fail to surprise. Samson’s severed ear takes on a life of its own and it enables him to hear what is happening wherever the ear is. It’s very useful for a detective, like being in two places at once, and very disconcerting.
Samson soon acquires a group of expert witnesses who help in his search. His father’s tailor, an eye doctor and his new girlfriend Nadezhda, a mathematician who works on the census at the nearby statistics office. Each adds their own world-weary interpretation of Samson’s task. ‘It’s a shame to lead a senseless existence when the sense of your existence can bring some good to the world,’ says the retired fingerprint expert when asked to help.
Quickly read, this is so much more than a crime novel and, be warned, not the usual detective fiction. This is book one of Kurkov’s Kyiv Mysteries. Next is The Stolen Heart.

If you like this, try:-
‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood #1PENTECOST&PARKER
‘A Rising Man’ by Abir Mukherjee #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SILVER BONE by Andrey Kurkov https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7X4 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Fiona Leitch

#BookReview ‘A Rising Man’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India

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I love discovering a new author and series and savouring the delight of books to come. A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee is first in the Wyndham & Banerjee historical crime series set in Calcutta in 1919. Abir MukherjeeA fascinating combination of facts and settings get this book moving quicker than is normal for the first of a series. An English policeman newly arrived in India who asks awkward questions, a tradition-bound corrupt and racist white police force, a dead man found with a note in his mouth threatening the English in India, powerful men who are very enthusiastic about hanging the obvious suspect. All set within the framework of an India in the last decades of Empire when a newly-arrived Ghandi was advocating peaceful non-cooperation rather than violent terrorism.
Former Scotland Yard detective Captain Sam Wyndham arrives in Calcutta fleeing bad memories of tragedy at home and nightmares from trench warfare in the Great War. His tipple is whisky and, when things get really bad, opium. He joins an Indian Police Force organised on racial lines and operating according to the newly introduced Rowlatt Rules, emergency legislation to combat terrorism allowing indefinite detention and imprisonment without trial or judicial review. Wyndham, something of a naif and idealist, persists in following the method of investigation he learned in England which means he soon ruffles feathers.
The dead man is an important white civil servant, that he was found dead outside a brothel in a dodgy part of town means the powers-that-be want a quick arrest. Wyndham, with Sub-Inspector Digby and Sergeant ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee, must find the killer quickly. Wyndham acts on instinct. Digby, the cynical old hand who has been looked over for promotion, is steeped in the casual racism with which Calcutta is riddled. Banerjee is the fresh-faced Indian policeman, university-educated, who always asks the pertinent questions but is painfully shy with women. One of the pleasures of the book is seeing the friendship between Wyndham and Bannerjee develop.
Fresh, entertaining. A very satisfying read. Next is A Necessary Evil.

Here are my reviews of two other books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
SMOKE AND ASHES #3WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
DEATH IN THE EAST #4WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE SHADOWS OF MEN #5WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE BURNING GROUNDS #6WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

And a standalone contemporary thriller:-
THE PINNACLE

If you like this, try:-
‘Wilderness’ by Campbell Hart #1ARBOGAST
‘Darktown’ by Thomas Mullen
‘Death at the Sign of the Rook’ by Kate Atkinson #6JACKSONBRODIE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A RISING MAN by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7SD via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Verity Bright

#BookReview ‘Munich Wolf’ by Rory Clements #crime #thriller

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A standalone thriller by Rory Clements is to be treasured, though I wonder if Munich Wolf is the first of a new between-the-wars crime series. Munich in June 1935 is the spiritual home of Nazism. The vibrant city is full of young people having a good time. Except pretty girls are being killed. Can maverick police detective Sebastian Wolff find the murderer before another girl dies. Rory ClementsWolff faces an uphill battle in investigating the murder of a young English woman, the Honourable Miss Rosie Palmer, daughter of a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, and friend of Adolf Hitler’s supporter Unity Mitford. Politicians fear a diplomatic incident, Hitler wants the murderer to be apprehended immediately, the Bavarian Political Police wants to send Wolff to Dachau, his boss wants a quiet life, and his Hitler Youth enthusiast son thinks he is a traitor to Germany. Sebastian, who believes police work is about apprehending villains regardless of social class, politics, race, gender or wealth, must uphold the law within a political landscape evolving into a dictatorship where people vanish overnight and onlookers feign ignorance.
What is the meaning of strange lipstick marks on the corpse; random scribbles, Hebrew writing or something mythical. When Wolff asks a specialist for help, he complicates the case further. Only his mother, who is constantly trying to feed him, and his girlfriend Hexie, who is something of a rebel, seem to be on his side.
After a slowish-start, this turns into a thrilling read. A complex crime story set at the time of momentous political upheaval. Munich is full of a toxic combination of people. Hitler, his intimates and fanatical supporters; followers of the Völkisch racial ideology; power-hungry aristocrats; brutal thugs, and young upper-class English women happy to party with handsome SS officers in their black uniforms tailored by Hugo Boss. While the in-crowd party to excess – one celebration features endless champagne and naked women writhing in ecstasy as they fight on a lawn for a flag – Jews are being deported and homosexuals terrorised.
The Lancia-driving anti-Nazi Wolff is a likeable hero and defender of the word of the law. He is not perfect; he works too hard, lacks diplomacy and has a short fuse. But he doesn’t respond well to being bullied and continues to investigate when he has been threatened, attacked and locked up.
As a fan of the Tom Wilde, series, I’m happy to find another Rory Clements character to root for.

Read my review of the next book in this series:-
EVIL IN HIGH PLACES #2SEBASTIANWOLFF

Click the title to read my reviews of the Tom Wilde thriller series by Rory Clements:-
CORPUS #1TOMWILDE
NUCLEUS #2TOMWILDE
NEMESIS #3TOMWILDE
HITLER’S SECRET #4TOMWILDE
A PRINCE AND A SPY #5TOMWILDE
THE MAN IN THE BUNKER #6TOMWILDE
THE ENGLISH FUHRER #7TOMWILDE
A COLD WIND FROM MOSCOW #8TOMWILDE

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge #1HelenGrace
‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley
‘A Fatal Crossing’ by Tom Hindle

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MUNICH WOLF by Rory Clements https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7Qs via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Christina Courtenay

#BookReview ‘Death at the Sign of the Rook’ by Kate Atkinson #crime

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Oh what a treat, a new Jackson Brodie book from Kate Atkinson. Death at the Sign of the Rook is sixth in this fast-moving, witty character-led crime series. This time, Jackson is on the trail of a stolen painting. Or perhaps it hasn’t been stolen after all. Kate AtkinsonNew grandfather Jackson, in the midst of a mid-life crisis and driving a huge new Land Rover Defender, takes on the case of a missing painting belonging to the recently deceased mother of the most boring brother and sister. As he investigates Dorothy Padgett’s carer Melanie Hope, who disappeared at the same time as ‘The Woman with a Weasel,’ Brodie finds other unsolved cases involving stolen paintings. Could they be linked? Jackson is reunited with police officer Reggie Chase who helps – checking things on the police computer, despite her misgivings – and the duo become pulled into a surreal world of a dual reality.
Burton Makepeace, a rundown Yorkshire country mansion, has also lost a painting, in this case by JMW Turner. Now partly converted into a hotel, Burton Makepeace is hosting a Murder Mystery Weekend and as the snowfall turns into waist-high drifts, travellers are stranded and the murders begin. Truth and fiction become entangled as a group of actors are let loose in the large country house with endless rooms, hidden stairs and dangerous battlements. Local vicar Simon, who has recently lost his voice, gets lost in the snow and stumbles into the Murder Mystery, immediately to be confused by the amateur sleuths as the fictional vicar on their cast list. At times I read in a haze of confusion as real people and actors merged; a social comment on today’s perception of truth, sort-of-truth and fake truth perpetuated by social media. How do we know what is really true and who to believe. Jackson, with the help of Reggie, has to sort out truth from lies and work out who’s who. The cast of characters is a combination of Agatha Christie and Cluedo.
Told at breakneck speed, so many laughs, what a wonderful book. Only Kate Atkinson could write this story, wonderful craftsmanship, tension, farce, wicked humour and dark threat. It starts off racing from the first page and doesn’t stop until the last.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Kate Atkinson:-
A GOD IN RUINS
BIG SKY #5JACKSONBRODIE
LIFE AFTER LIFE
NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY
SHRINES OF GAIETY
TRANSCRIPTION
… and try the #FirstPara of EMOTIONALLY WEIRD

If you like this, try:-
‘The Vanished Bride’ by Bella Ellis #1BronteMysteries
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James #1AdamDalgliesh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK by Kate Atkinson https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7w6 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Nora Roberts

#BookReview ‘An Expert in Murder’ by Nicola Upson @nicolaupsonbook #JosephineTey #crime #mystery

6 Replies

An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson is an intriguing concept and the first in a series. A historical crime novel based on a real person – mystery novelist Josephine Tey, pseudonym of author Elizabeth MacKintosh – Upson places Tey in London’s theatreland where her successful play Richard of Bordeaux is drawing the crowds. This stage success happened for real, but Upson adds a murder. Or two. Nicola UpsonHow will a writer of crime and mystery novels deal with murder so close, so threatening? Will her creative imagination help friend Detective Inspector Archie Penrose find the murderer. And what happens when someone you know becomes a suspect. More a character-led mystery than a detective or crime story.
A mixture of fact and fiction – Tey was real, the role of John Terry was in reality played by John Gielgud – the story is slow to get going after the initial death. Partly this is the curse of the first instalment of a series, characters must be drawn, relationships established, clues laid for storylines which will run throughout future novels. The 1930s theatre setting is full of colourful characters though not much action actually happens in the New Theatre itself. The story kept me guessing but at times I lost track of the labyrinthine connections between people dating from the Great War and worried that I had missed something. In places there is so much new information I had to re-read. I particularly wanted to know more about Archie Penrose but perhaps that will come in the next book.
The period between the two world wars is a fascinating time with enormous social change but still retaining a straitjacket of Edwardian social conventions, which is fertile territory for a novelist. However there were moments when language and behaviour seemed a little too modern for the Thirties setting.
This is a slow to start to the series but intriguing enough to make me want to give it another chance. Perhaps I’ll try a novel later in the series [at the time of writing there are 11]. Ultimately, more a mystery than a detective or crime story.

Read my reviews of these other books by Nicola Upson:-
ANGEL WITH TWO FACES #2JOSEPHINETEY
STANLEY AND ELSIE

And here’s my review of BRAT FARRAR by the real-life author Josephine Tey.

If you like this, try:-
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Shrines of Gaiety’ by Kate Atkinson
‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood #1PENTECOST&PARKER

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AN EXPERT IN MURDER by Nicola Upson @nicolaupsonbook https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-71K via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Elodie Harper