Rhys Bowen: Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding Wednesday, Aug 8 2018 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and historical saga and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:04 am


Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness mysteries are a continued delight, and fans will be especially happy to follow Lady Georgina on her way to her long-planned wedding in Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding.

The 12th addition contains all the charm of a royal wedding–yes, the King and Queen and those two little princesses will be there. But it seems Georgie’s amateur sleuth days are far from over.

Wedding details need to be honed down and the list keep growing, thanks to the Queen. The year is 1935, and King George V is at the end of his reign while Mrs. Wallis Simpson is annoyingly dating the Prince of Wales.

Assorted relatives are having their own nuptials, and the groom, charming fiance` Darcy O’Mara, is cagey on his profession, as usual. But Georgie’s househunting is what’s disappointing her.

From the lackluster houses available in the 1930s, Georgie is surpised by an invitation to live at Eynsleigh Manor, which she will one day inherit. But when she arrives to get the estate in order, she finds the run-down house matched by the shoddy attitudes of the staff.

Chaos ensures, along with murder, robbery, servants not doing their job–and Georgie’s mother and grandfather deciding to move in. Which is worse for the secondary royal who’s down at the heels? And those funerals will affect Georgie and those closest to her.

But despite the trials and tribulations, Georgie manages to pull off the wedding of the year. You’ll be charmed by the history and the descriptions of the manor, as well as the confidence Georgie finds.

A grand addition to the long-running series, sure to be a reader favorite.

 

Louise Candlish: Our House Tuesday, Aug 7 2018 

complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:31 am


Louise Candlish’s Our House is being called ‘domestic suspense’ and I suppose that fits, but it doesn’t do justice to this compelling story that had Auntie M abandoning the dinner cooking because she opened the first page and started to read when it arrived in the post.

This story sucks readers in and makes them turn pages to find out how it could possibly all end.

Fiona Lawson and her husband Bram are separated after she catches him with another woman in their son’s playhouse at the bottom of the garden of the house she loves. While she is bitterly disappointed in this repeat offense, Bram is an excellent father.

Worried about her two young boys, she decides to try a parenting arrangement becoming popular in the US: bird’s nest custody, where the children stay in their home and the parents come and go. They agree to try this arrangement out for several months, with Bram arriving every Friday afternoon and staying until Sunday.

It’s an interesting way to deal with keeping young children secure and seems to be working well. Fi has even started to date a bit, an attractive man, as the months roll by.

Until the day she arrives home earlier than expected after a few days with her new beau to find a moving van pulled up outside her house and a new couple in the process of moving in.

It’s the stuff of nightmares. Surely there is a huge mistake! And where are all of her belongings and furniture? Yet the new couple claim they closed on the house that very morning and Bram was involved. But when Fi tries to reach him, she can’t find him or her sons.

Through alternating bits of the story, Bram and Fi tell their stories of what led to this betrayal. But that’s not all that happens. In cruel twists, the worst is yet to come.

This is a dark and gripping read, one that will have readers up until long after the lights should be out to find out the ending, which packs a punch that kept Auntie M thinking about it for days.
Highly recommended.

 

Mandy Morton: Magical Mystery Paws Sunday, Aug 5 2018 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:37 am


Drawing on her own singer-songwriter folk rock days from the 70s, Mandy Morton brings an authentic feel to her 6th No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series with Magical Mystery Paws.

This time her pair of sleuths are between cases when Hettie Bagshot, whose own folk rock career bears more than a passing resemblence to Morton’s, and her sidekick, Tilly Jenkins, enlist their friend Bruiser when they become convinced to travel the “Summer of Fluff” tour bus to aid the comeback of blind punk rock cat, Patty Sniff, on her new tour.

Crammed together on Psycho Derek’s bus along with Patty are her backups, the Cheese Triangles, Kitty O’Shea’s Irish dance troupe with their wheelchair-bound Russian choreographer, and very bad magician Derek and assistant Belisha Beacon.

It’s a real hodgepodge of chararacters who take off in the psychedelic bus, if the wheezing crate makes it to the first stop.
When the drummer is found dead after the first performance, Hettie and Tilley must solve the murder as well as assist on the tour.

And what a tour it is, from mini-skirts and guitars, lighting and sound, to the sweet smell of memories for Hettie, as well as from something most of the cats are smoking. The puns galore add a light touch, from the mysteries of Agatha Crispy Tilly loves to the Tabby Road Recording Studios. There’s M. Balm, the town’s undertaker, and a jab to Morton’s partner, Nicolette Upstart, the famous writer. Auntie M may have to ask Morton about that sobriquet!

But don’t let the puns and mild humor distract you from what is a really well done mystery. If you look beyond the anthropomorphic business, all of the vagaries of humans are there, as well as telling details about human nature and emotions like jealousy and greed.

Morton’s extensive knowledge of cats lets her incorporates their mannerisms, likes and dislikes into these crime-solving realistic cat detectives. Readers will be entranced with this humanless world of cats Morton has designed.

Jolly good fun wrapped up in a darn good mystery.

 

Stephen Booth: Dead in the Dark Wednesday, Aug 1 2018 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 1:32 am


A new Ben Cooper/Diane Fry mystery is always a read to look forward to, and Auntie M was happy to finally get her hands on Dead in the Dark, the 17th in a series that has lost none of its attraction and only grown over the years.

Ben is a DI now and reviews an old case that was never solved. A decade ago police believed that Reece Bower had killed his wife, Annette, but the case was never brought to court after the woman’s own father thought he saw her alive several weeks after she disappeared.

Now Reece himself has disappeared, and this time the old and new case are being investigated together. Reece’s new wife is pushing for answers for her and their two sons.

Ben would like the aid of the Major Crimes Unit and his old compatriot, DS Diane Fry, but can’t until he can produce a body.

A body is exactly what Diane Fry has on her hands, in a town that has a large Polish population who concern the locals to varying degrees. When a man is found dead at home, stabbed to death, it appears he was knifed in the alley outside his rented flat.

The victim’s landlord is someone being watched for right-wing extremist activites, and just might be involved in something more dangerous.

Add in arson cases, and family issues for both Ben and Diane, and you have a nicely plotted set of cases to keep both detectives busy.

Once again, the landscape will prove itself to be more than just a setting in this very satisfying addition to a prime series.

 

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