Tag Archives: Robert Thorogood

#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 by Robert Thorogood:-
THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB #1MARLOWMURDERCLUB
DEATH COMES TO MARLOW #2MARLOWMURDERCLUB
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 ‘Death Comes to Marlow’ by Robert Thorogood #cosycrime

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An ingenious closed room murder mystery is at the heart of Death Comes to Marlow, second in the Marlow Murder Club cosy crime series by Robert Thorogood. And no, although I had my suspicions about the murderer, I simply couldn’t work out how the crime was done. Robert ThorogoodThe friendship between the three ladies that we saw in the first book in the series, The Marlow Murder Club, is now firmly established. Crossword setter Judith Potts still goes for naked dips in the River Thames, vicar’s wife Becks is still quiet and afraid of offending anyone, and brash Suzie now has a regular spot as presenter on the local radio station. But each still has secrets and their own peculiar sensitivities, all of which figure in the solving of this crime. Sir Peter Bailey, a bigwig in Marlow, is getting married. Out of the blue, he telephones to invite Judith to the pre-wedding party. Judith, who has never met Sir Peter, is immediately on the alert that something is not right. He fears for his life and she suspects he wants her there as a witness to murder. So of course she takes her two friends with her. When there is an almighty crash of glass breaking, Sir Peter is found dead beneath an enormous wooden cabinet full of scientific equipment. Judith is immediately convinced it is murder, not an accident.
The twists and turns of this crime, the tangling of witness statements and the – decidedly inadmissible – tactics employed by the murder club enable Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik to piece together the truth. The three women are a formidable team, each bringing their own strengths to the problem-solving process. Judith looks for patterns, disruption to those patterns and glaring omissions in the vein of Sherlock Holmes’s ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’, ie the dog that did not bark. Becks is attuned to social niceties, emotions and relationships. Suzie is pragmatic, with clarity she sees the nuts and bolts of the unappealing, the unattractive, and the low-life.
All the suspects have alibis. The key to the locked room was found in the victim’s pocket. There is a family feud, a missing will, secretive telephone calls and a resentful former wife. Tanika has been demoted from her acting detective role when her boss returns from sick leave and, although she believes Judith, Becks and Suzie when they shout murder, her boss doesn’t. So although the three ladies are free to snoop around and ask awkward questions, they do so without police back-up. There are plenty of red herrings, perhaps too many actually, and a secret being kept by Becks is ultimately shared.
Very clever, very entertaining. I gobbled it up.

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB #1MARLOWMURDERCLUB
THE QUEEN OF POISONS #3MARLOWMURDERCLUB

… and my review of THE KILLING OF POLLY CARTER #2DEATHINPARADISE by the same author

If you like this, try:-
‘Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley’ by MC Beaton #4AGATHARAISIN
‘Murder in the Snow’ by Verity Bright #4LADYELEANORSWIFT
‘Murder on the Dance Floor’ by Helena Dixon #4MISSUNDERHAY

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEATH COMES TO MARLOW by Robert Thorogood https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8FM via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Abir Mukherjee

#BookReview ‘The Marlow Murder Club’ by Robert Thorogood #cosycrime

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I’m very late coming to The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, spurred on by wanting to read the books before watching the television series. I’ve loved Agatha Christie books since I was young and this is full of the same spirit; the puzzle of the unravelling a mystery, set within a small community with a limited geographical area, with death but not violence. Curiosity, nosiness, imagination, determination and knowing when to break the rules.Robert ThorogoodThree women are brought together accidentally, randomly, by murder. Three murders in quiet, respectable, boring Marlow where nothing ever happens. The three victims seem unconnected. Suitably, seventy-seven year old Judith Potts who asks the awkward questions is a crossword setter, a professional puzzler who invents exactly the kind of cryptic clues I don’t understand.
Until the first murder happens at a house on the opposite side of the river from Judith’s waterside home, she has been living a quiet, almost hermit-like, minding her own business. She has earned a reputation as an eccentric. It all starts one summer night when Judith strips naked and steps into the Thames for a nighttime swim. She hears a gunshot and finds her friend Stefan Dunwoody shot dead. Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik, Judith quickly decides, is asking the wrong questions and too slowly. Judith’s first suspect is local auctioneer Elliot Howard but he has an alibi; he was at choir practice when Stefan died. Not believing anything she is told, Judith goes to the church to make enquiries where she finds a woman hiding in a cupboard. It is Becks Starling, the shy wife of the vicar, professional housewife and mother, incredibly tidy and drinks only tea. It’s difficult to think of two people more dissimilar in nature than Becks and whisky-drinking, naked-swimming, Judith.
When there’s a second murder in a bungalow on a suburban street in Marlow, Judith meets her third co-investigator. Iqbal Kassam was a taxi driver who worked the night shift and slept during the day. His dream was to own a boat on the river. So why has he been shot in the head? Judith, suspecting the two murders are linked, packs a flask of tea and a packet of beetroot sandwiches and sets out to be nosy. She meets dog-walker Suzie Harris who is walking Iqbal’s Dobermann, Emma.
And so the investigative trio is formed and the story is mainly told by these three women and Tanika Malik. This is a funny, clever novel which pays tribute to the type of small town community which exists across the country. It also shines a light on the roles of women in modern society, the misconceptions about their abilities, assumptions made based on personal appearance, and the bullying and crime that goes on in even the most idyllic-looking streets.
I’m hooked. Next is Death comes to Marlow.

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
DEATH COMES TO MARLOW #2MARLOWMURDERCLUB
THE QUEEN OF POISONS #3MARLOWMURDERCLUB

… and my review of THE KILLING OF POLLY CARTER #2DEATHINPARADISE by the same author

If you like this, try:-
‘Death at the Dance’ by Verity Bright #2Lady Eleanor Swift
‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ by Sophie Hannah #3Poirot
‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz #1SusanRyeland

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB by Robert Thorogood https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8b0 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Frank Gardner

#BookReview ‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #crime

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The Killing of Polly Carter is second in the ‘Death in Paradise’ series by Robert Thorogood, and the first that I have read. I picked it up, unaware of the TV series of the same name, so I am playing catch-up. Robert Thorogood My first reaction was that it seemed lightweight, but the story and the characters pulled me in. This definitely fits into the comfort crime category so effectively occupied by MC Beaton. Detective Inspector Richard Poole is a man out of place. An English policeman on a tiny Caribbean island, he is a proper chap who persists in wearing leather shoes and woollen suits even at the height of the summer heat. His team is small and their resources are limited, which makes this more of an old-fashioned tale as they put together clue after clue. The setting is luscious.
Supermodel Polly Carter is dead, is it suicide or murder? In the true Agatha Christie fashion, of whom Thorogood is a childhood fan, this is a ‘closed room’ mystery where few people have the opportunity and motive. One by one, each of Polly’s family and friends are suspected, cleared then suspected again. In true Christie fashion, when the culprit is unveiled I thought ‘oh of course’ without actually guessing the identity correctly.
The book covers are beautiful.

Here are my reviews of books in the Marlow Murder Club series by the same author:-
THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB #1MARLOWMURDERCLUB
DEATH COMES TO MARLOW #2MARLOWMURDERCLUB
THE QUEEN OF POISONS #3MARLOWMURDERCLUB

If you like this, try:-
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary #2MARNIEROME
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley #1GEORGIECONNELLY

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE KILLING OF POLLY CARTER by Robert Thorogood http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Tj via @SandraDanby