Tag Archives: female detectives

#BookReview ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve #crime

13 Replies

I love finding a new series to explore. Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood is first in the late 1940s New York-set Pentecost & Parker detective series. Certainly different from anything else I’ve read in this genre. The post-war city setting is dynamic and refreshing. Stephen SpotswoodWhen circus runaway Willowjean Parker meets her new boss, private detective Lillian Pentecost, it is so nearly their last meeting. Ms Pentecost, whose advice has been sought in the past by Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the wartime president, recognises Will’s unusual talents – knife-throwing, sharpshooting, bareback horse riding, fire-eating and how to get out of a straitjacket – and recruits her as her private assistant. New York is a swirling mixture of poverty, opportunity, change and excess. The war has ended and everyone is adjusting to the new rules of life. When wealthy widow Abigail Collins is murdered not long after her husband committed suicide, and in the same room of their mansion, the police investigation stalls. So the family calls in Lillian Pentecost to investigate. The Collins family steelworks faces financial trouble as wartime contracts are up for renewal, soldiers are returning from war to the jobs done in their absence by women, and rumours are circulating that Abigail was killed by her dead husband Al.
The Abigail Collins case is told from Will’s viewpoint, a nice mixture of detecting, caring for her fragile boss, and going off track pursuing her own suspicions. Will – newly trained in law, shorthand, car mechanics, bookkeeping and driving – is brave, strong and well-meaning. Sometimes she gets into trouble but she often digs up new evidence. Something that MS-sufferer Ms Pentecost, Ms. P, is less able to do. In a future book I’d like to hear more from Ms. P.
The death of Abigail in a locked room seems impossible to solve but the combination of Ms. P’s razor-sharp mind, memory of past crimes and vast cuttings archive, with Will’s derring-do, leads them to clues the police have failed to spot. There are plenty of suspects and witnesses; a theatrical fortune teller and her slimy assistant, a brawny factory manager, Abigail and Al’s fragile son and daughter, Al’s business partner, a failed journalist turned archivist and an academic sceptical about clairvoyancy.
The setting is special, the relationship between the two lead female characters is special. I’ve read a lot of crime novels of different sub-genres and have an eye for spotting the guilty party, Fortune Favours the Dead kept me guessing until the last pages. And it’s fun.

If you’re curious, try the #FirstPara of FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD.

And here are my reviews of other books in the series:-
MURDER UNDER HER SKIN #2PENTECOST&PARKER
SECRETS TYPED IN BLOOD #3PENTECOST&PARKER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #2DEATHINPARADISE
‘Big Sky’ by Kate Atkinson #5JACKSONBRODIE
‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6VM via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Ken Follett

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

8 Replies

A Mansion for Murder, thirteenth in the Kate Shackleton 1930s crime series by Frances Brody, centres on an unlucky Yorkshire mansion. Intrigued when she receives a letter from a stranger, Kate visits the Milner Field estate, near the mill town of Saltaire, to meet the letter writer. But Ronnie Cresswell, who promised to tell a ‘story from the past,’ has drowned. Can Kate discover this story for herself? Frances BrodyMilner Field has an unhappy reputation for bad luck, failure and death. Everyone around the mansion, and nearby Salt Mills, is hiding something. At the mill, a new contract may be lost because an employee is selling sensitive commercial information. And now Ronnie is dead. Some secrets relate to the present day, others are anchored in the past. So many secrets mean lots of red herrings hiding the truth. Ronnie’s death happens at the beginning of the story and a lot of characters are introduced together. Some are just names and I struggled to separate them in my mind, appearing briefly and not seen again.
Brody tells this story in two timelines, Kate in 1930 and a child in the past; the year isn’t specified, the chapters are simply headed ‘Long Ago’. Ronnie Cresswell works for the maintenance department at Salt Mills. His family are deeply connected with the local area. He lives with his parents at The Lodge on the Milner Field estate, which is now for sale. Ronnie’s parents, father [confusingly also called Ronald] is head gardener. His mother is housekeeper and there are three siblings, Stephen, Mark and Nancy. Ronnie, it emerges, is courting Pamela Whittaker, daughter of the Salt Mills owner. Not everyone is happy with their relationship.
The events of the past and present are thinly connected but they contribute to the eerie atmosphere of the once grand house and explain how local legends and rumour take root. I was left feeling that the creepiness of the house and its grounds was under-exploited. A number of sub-plots jog along, some of which amount to nothing much. But the story of Rosie and Jim Sykes is a good one. The most affecting storyline belongs to Miss Mason, the schoolteacher.
Not as tightly written as Brody’s previous Kate Shackleton novels perhaps, as seems to be the case with a number of recently-released novels, it was written during lockdown. Overall this is a good inter-war series with a thoroughbred lead character in Kate Shackleton. Set in a period of social change, Kate’s character and job reflect the alteration in women’s lives, the widening of their opportunities and ambitions, and the old-fashioned obstacles they must still bear.

Read my reviews of these other Kate Shackleton novels:-
DYING IN THE WOOL #1KATESHACKLETON … and read the #FirstPara HERE
A MEDAL FOR MURDER #2KATESHACKLETON
A DEATH IN THE DALES #7KATESHACKLETON
A SNAPSHOT OF MURDER #10KATESHACKLETON
DEATH AND THE BREWERY QUEEN #12KATESHACKLETON

If you like this, try:-
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG
‘Or the Bull Kills You’ by Jason Webster #1MAXCAMARA

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A MANSION FOR MURDER by Frances Brody @FrancesBrody https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-67i via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Joanna Trollope

#BookReview ‘The Skull Beneath the Skin’ by PD James #crime

19 Replies

A classic closed room whodunit, The Skull Beneath the Skin is the second of only two Cordelia Gray private detective mysteries by PD James. I wonder why she didn’t write more? PD JamesGray’s fledgling detective agency is relying on finding missing cats when Sir George Ralston arrives unannounced to request Gray ensure the safety of his actress wife, Clarissa Lisle, at her next performance. Lisle has been receiving threatening letters and worries about freezing on stage. Sir George seems unconvinced of Clarissa’s danger. ‘The job I’m offering is a mixture of functions. You’d be part bodyguard, part private secretary, part investigator and part – well, nursemaid.’ Which sounds unpromising but the job pays well. So Cordelia leaves for Courcy Island, location of an amateur private performance of The Duchess of Malfi in which Lisle will play the starring role. As with all James’ novels, there is a delicious laying of pragmatic fact about those in attendance mixed with literary references and poetry.
Of course, Clarissa Lisle is murdered. The police arrive and Cordelia finds herself one of the suspects. There is the usual ragbag of potential murderers. The cuckolded husband; the dying former lover; the pampered stepson; the unsuccessful sister; the silent and sullen dresser; the efficient butler and his wife; the boatman and handyman; and the host of the event, arts patron and novelist Ambrose Gorringe. The setting is beautiful with hidden horror. Courcy Island, set off the Dorset coast, was the scene of nastiness and death during World War Two. Gorringe takes great delight in showing his newly-arrived guests around the island and displaying its dark past.
James writes such dense yet enlightening paragraphs that kindle curiosity. For example, at the end of chapter four, ‘He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire, longer even than love. Walking slowly in the sunshine and thinking of the weekend ahead, he smiled at the realization that what was most alive in him now was the capacity for mischief.’  James, as always early in her novels, sets the scene with much hinting, veiling of the truth and making her own mischief.

Here’s my review of the first Cordelia Gray mystery:-
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN #1CORDELIAGRAY

Read my reviews of the Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
A MIND TO MURDER #2ADAMDALGLIESH
UNNATURAL CAUSES #3ADAMDALGLIESH
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE #4ADAMDALGLIESH
THE BLACK TOWER #5ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS #6ADAMDALGLIESH
A TASTE FOR DEATH #7ADAMDALGLIESH
DEVICES AND DESIRES #8ADAMDALGLIESH
ORIGINAL SIN #9ADAMDALGLIESH … read the first paragraph HERE
A CERTAIN JUSTICE #10ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS #11ADAMDALGLIESH
THE MURDER ROOM #12ADAMDALGLIESH … read the first paragraph HERE
THE LIGHTHOUSE #13ADAMDALGLIESH
THE PRIVATE PATIENT #14ADAMDALGLIESH

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD

If you like this, try:-
‘The Doll Funeral’ by Kate Hamer
‘Due Diligence’ by DJ Harrison #1JENNYPARKER
‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN by PD James https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3n8 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Silent Twin’ by Caroline Mitchell #crime

3 Replies

Blackwater Farm, an isolated farmhouse outside the town of Haven, is a creepy place: things move, are thrown and rattle, and not just because of the wind. In The Silent Twin by Caroline Mitchell, the new owners of the farm, a young couple with identical twin daughters, have plans to convert the place. But all is not well. Caroline MitchellWhen nine-year old Abigail goes missing, the cracks become ravines. Detective Constable Jennifer Knight is a policewoman, a Family Liaison Officer with an unusual skill. This is the third book in the Knight series by Caroline Mitchell and the first I have read, so it was a while before I realized she is a psychic. Jennifer is not an unreliable narrator as such, but her ‘take’ on things for me at times conflicted with what I expected from a police investigation. Is she a psychic first or a police officer?
Everyone has something to hide and at one point I suspected each member of the family and their inner circle as the murderer. The story is told from three main viewpoints – Joanna, the young mother; Jennifer, who seems rather mysterious; and diary entries by an unknown person – and so starts the guessing game. Whose diary is it, whose viewpoint can be trusted?
If you often read crime fiction, then Jennifer will not seem a reliable narrator of a murder investigation. She belongs to a specialist team often on the periphery of the main case. In The Silent Twin, her commanding officer often seems to be operating to another agenda. But it is an interesting premise, a detective story that is just a little bit different.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman’ by PD James #1CORDELIAGRAY
‘A Medal for Murder’ by Frances Brody #2KATESHACKLETON
‘Murder Under her Skin’ by Stephen Spotswood #2PENTECOST&PARKER

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SILENT TWIN by Caroline Mitchell via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1WI

#BookReview ‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody @FrancesBrody #cosycrime

11 Replies

This was a book picked at random purely because of the beautiful cover design and the title. Frances Brody is a new author for me, I had never heard of her Kate Shackleton series. Inadvertently, I chose her latest, A Death in the Dales, the seventh Shackleton book. Now I plan to go back to the beginning. I didn’t struggle for lack of backstory, so I don’t think this is a series which must be read in order. Frances BrodyIt is 1926, Leeds, and Kate Shackleton’s niece is recovering from diptheria. Aunt and niece arrive in the Yorkshire Dales village of Langcliffe in the middle of the May Day celebrations, both in need of a holiday. There they are greeted by two men – the local doctor who has offered the loan of his recently deceased Aunt Freda’s house to Kate, and an elderly local man who presses into Kate’s hands a mysterious box. And so starts the unravelling of a murder, 10 years previously, of which Freda was a witness. Freda believed the wrong man was convicted and sentenced to death.
There is a lot going on in this story: the wrongly convicted murderer, the disappearance of a young farm boy, the courting of Kate by Freda’s nephew, the doctor, Lucian, another suspicious death, love entanglements and local secrets. Brody efficiently weaves together the various threads, setting murder against the beautiful but harsh backdrop of the Yorkshire Dales. There are lovely snippets of 1920s life, the cars, the fashion, the food, the Yorkshire dialect, and the aftermath of the Great War.
More than just a detective story, a period drama with strong female characters, a thoughtful reflection of the impact of the war on the lives of everyone, in city and country.

Read my reviews of these other Kate Shackleton novels:-
DYING IN THE WOOL #1KATESHACKLETON … and read the #FirstPara HERE
A MEDAL FOR MURDER #2KATESHACKLETON
A SNAPSHOT OF MURDER #10KATESHACKLETON
DEATH AND THE BREWERY QUEEN #12KATESHACKLETON
A MANSION FOR MURDER #13KATESHACKLETON

If you like this, try:-
‘Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death’ by MC Beaton #1AGATHARAISIN
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James #1ADAMDALGLIESH
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A DEATH IN THE DALES by Frances Brody @FrancesBrody http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1TM via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley #crimefiction

1 Reply

Business as Usual was very excitable from the beginning, a debut author, EL Lindley, who lets the need for tension dominate. It’s a busy story: an unpredictable documentary producer, Georgie Connelly; a missing teenage girl; a silent ex-soldier; and a dodgy Russian businessman. At times, I wanted a breather from the tension, a slower build. EL LindleyThe plotting is clever and it’s a tight group of characters, I hope they will continue in book two. I particularly liked Mervyn the taxi driver. The sexual chemistry between Georgie and former US marine James is evident from day one, though on the page they snipe and squabble.
The novel is set in Los Angeles, though this is not immediate on the page. There is huge potential for this to be exploited in book two, I’d also like to see more of Georgie’s documentary production; in this book she just seems to sit in the office. So there’s lots to develop here for a likeable group of characters. There are three books in the series and I liked Business As Usual enough to want to read more.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Various Haunts of Men’ by Susan Hill #1SIMONSERRAILLER
‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus
‘The Blind Man of Seville’ by Robert Wilson #1FALCÓN

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BUSINESS AS USUAL by EL Lindley via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ij