Gabriel Valjan: The Company Files: 2. The Naming Game Friday, Feb 1 2019 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and historical saga and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed Auntie M Writes Crime 12:54 am

Please welcome Gabrile Valjan, to give readers an insight into his writing and talk about his newest release in The Company Files, 2. The Naming Game:

Auntie M: You have two distinct series from Winter Goose Publishing. Your first series, the Roma Series, is presently at five novels. Readers receive a panoramic sweep of Italian culture and food, along with some light humor, while your characters solve crimes. Then you go dark into John le Carré territory with The Company Files. Why the switch?

GV: It’s important to me that I show readers that I have range. I make no distinction between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ fiction, yet I’ve encountered both readers and agents who do. All writers, myself included, want to tell an engaging story and, in the case of a series, want repeat readers. The two series are indeed different. The Roma Series owes a debt of gratitude to the Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri, who created Inspector Salvo Montalbano. I wrote the Roma Series while I was dealing with a life-threatening illness, which is why food is prevalent, and because I respect Italian culture.

I have two books in The Company Files series. Both The Good Man and The Naming Game look back at the US during the Cold War, and I try to show that some attitudes have changed, while others have not. For instance, contemporary ICE raids can be traced back to J. Edgar Hoover’s response after the Wall Street bombing in 1920. Same MO. Same extrajudicial deportations.
Hoover pushed for a concentration camp for political dissidents. Not internment or detention camps, but a concentration camp.

AM: Your last Roma Series novel, Corporate Citizen, was quite violent, yet showcases your love for animals. Have you always loved animals?

GV: I do love animals. Bogie and Bacall are two cats in that novel. One of my characters, Silvio, agrees to take care of them for a friend. Anyone who follows me on social media knows I post pictures of my two cats on Saturday aka #Caturday on Twitter, and dogs for #WoofWednesday at a local dog park near me in Boston’s South End. Pets are family.

AM: Let’s jump back to your Company Files series. Book 2: The Naming Game is out in May, 2019. You said earlier that you wanted to show range. What do you do in this series that sets you apart from other authors in contemporary crime fiction?

GV: Crime is about transgression, in all its perverse and violent forms. Psychopaths. Serial killers. Sexual predators. There’s no escaping it. However, I explore crimes that governments commit for a variety of motives. When it comes to characters in most contemporary crime fiction, I have difficulty with unlikeable protagonists as the good guys, and I have an issue with profanity and violence for its own sake. Do you really need to have the f-word fifteen times within the first three pages to be ‘gritty’? I accept ‘realism’ but it sometimes seems slathered on thick. Also, give me a glimmer of hope in a dark story because I don’t read to get depressed. Real life and politics accomplishes that, thank you. I also question the logic of how effective a detective can be at his job if he’s an alcoholic or alienates everyone in the room. I’m weary of the battles with the bottle, the bitter ex-wife, the kid who won’t talk to mom or dad. I question how a character who doesn’t change over the course of several books can keep a reader coming back for more.

I offer readers different flaws in my characters. For instance, I show vulnerability as an asset. I have a character, Walker, in The Company Files, whose major obstacle is his lack of confidence. He fell in with the CIA, because he’s trying to find his way in life and love after the trauma of World War II. You’ll meet Leslie, an experienced operative who doesn’t want to return to the kitchen just because she’s a woman and the war is over; Sheldon, a damaged person with a complicated past who does the wrong things for the right reasons; Tania, the beautiful and traumatized refugee child brimming with rage; and then there’s Jack Marshall, the boss and mastermind who somehow orchestrates everything and everyone, while staying one step ahead of his nemesis, J. Edgar Hoover.

Another thing I do differently than most authors is I write three to five books and then revise the character development of all of my characters for a better arc before I search for a publisher for the novels. As for violence in my works, I prefer to imply it, or not go into graphic detail because we have all become desensitized to violence, whether it’s from media or, sadly, real life experiences. There are creative ways to imply sex, violence, and criminal misconduct. Watch Fritz Lang’s M, or any of the Pre-Code films, or catch the subtext about poverty and class distinction in most films from the 1930s.

Another major difference: one of the joys in writing The Company Files is I get to dispel the myth that life was better in the past. It wasn’t. Racism and sexism were so ingrained in American culture that it was accepted without question. I’ve talked to educated people who came of age in the 40s and 50s and was told nobody blinked at using the N-word, or at calling an adult African-American man ‘boy.’ How far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

AM: Who were your influences in crime fiction when you started writing?

GV: My first foray into crime fiction was reading Agatha Christie. I read all her mysteries in the seventh and eighth grades. Then I discovered Margaret Millar, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett, in that order. I ventured to discover other writers: Cain, Highsmith, etc. Christie appealed to me for her plotting and how her detectives solved mysteries. Hammett and Millar wrote in a clean direct style I admired, while Chandler introduced a seductive and poetic use of language, often at the expense of plot. I enjoy crime fiction because I found that most (but not all) ‘literary fiction’ can get tedious and the stories go ‘nowhere.’

AM: What’s a typical writing day like for you?

GV: Exercise and shower. Coffee. Write for three hours.

AM: A controversial question. Do you think writing can be taught?

GV: I think techniques can be taught, but here’s the catch: it requires critical thinking, and I think that’s Hit or Miss in today’s education. I’m not saying education in the past was better; it was different, for better or worse. Overall – and I know it’s generalization — education in America is not about becoming a better human being; it’s about getting a job. There’s a terrible irony in this drive for the practical and pragmatic approach. Formal education shouldn’t encourage conformity; it should unbridle curiosity and teach you analysis and critical thinking, so you can teach yourself. For example, I did not know how to edit until I read Dave King’s book, Self-Editing. I realized I had a deficit, and my curiosity compelled me to find a solution, determine whether the content of his book would work for me (it did). A curious and critical writer reads everything they can find to improve their writing and broaden their horizons as a human being.

Education that fosters regurgitation of one interpretation of a literary text so you can earn the high grade kills critical thinking; kills curiosity. Education should convey an understanding of how a story works or doesn’t. Follow? All that aside, there’s more to telling a story than book smarts. I’ve met some very intelligent people in my life, people with advanced degrees, best scores on all the standardized tests; and yet, when they write, their stories are dead, they lack heart, or their ego interfered with the story.

No, I don’t think writing can be taught because we all have our unique relationship to language, and we all interrupt the world around us in unique ways, and that is the special something nobody can teach you. What I am saying is you have to know yourself and the gift for storytelling – if it’s there – comes from decades of reading, of curiosity and wrestling with language. Literature comes from empathy and connection. When I pick up a book, I don’t look to an author to validate my existence and my life experiences. I couldn’t care less about gender and ethnicity either. I want a story. I want an experience. Transport me and call it entertainment, or rip my skin off and call it Art. I don’t care. For me to write well, I need the sum of all possibilities.

The fundamentals of the human condition have not changed: we need stories to survive and better ourselves. Stories are essential. I have no doubt that out there somewhere in this country’s slums and cornfields or in the cube farms of corporate America, language is alive and there are stories worth being told. The question is, Visibility, access to those authors, so they are read and heard?

AM: Finally, whose books would we find on your nightstand, waiting to be read, and what’s on the immediate horizon for you?

GV: Jane Goodrich’s The House at Lobster Cove and Louise Penny’s Kingdom of the Blind. I’m waiting to edit five novellas that precede my Roma Series with my publisher, and I’m writing the third book in another series, set in Shanghai.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, Gabriel. You are one busy writer! See you at Malice Domestic in May~

Gabriel Valjan is the author of two series available from Winter Goose Publishing. The Roma Series features forensic accountant Bianca on the lam from a covert US agency in Italy. Drawn from the historical record, Gabriel’s second series, The Company Files series introduces readers to the early days of the CIA and its subsequent rivalry with the FBI. His short stories have appeared in Level Best anthologies and other publications. Twice shortlisted for the Fish Prize, once for the Bridport Prize, and an Honorable Mention for the Nero Wolfe Black Orchid Novella Contest, he is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime National, a local member of Sisters in Crime New England, and an attendee of Bouchercon, Crime Bake, and Malice Domestic conferences.

 

Christian White: The Nowhere Child Wednesday, Jan 30 2019 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and debut and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:06 am


Melbourne writer Christian White’s manuscript for The Nowhere Child won last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, along with its $15,000 prize. It didn’t stay unpubbed long, and besides the book, with a second to follow, there’s a planned mini-series on this first.

And with good reason as readers will see once they read this story that has the feel it could happen to anyone, one of its attractions.

Photographer Kim Leamy is teaching evening classes in Melbourne when a stranger approaches her. The American man insists she is really Sammy Went, kidnapped from her Kentucky home when she was 2 years old. With her mother dead from cancer, her step-father refused to answer her questions but acknowledges there is a secret to her Australia origins. Kim flies to the US to visit Kentucky with this man who says he is her brother, determined to find out the truth.

Small-town Kentucky comes alive under White’s skilled pen, with anyone who has ever traveled through remote southern towns able to recognize the dusty woods and small town minds that populate Manson. It’s perhaps coincidence that the town’s name echoes one of the US’s most recognizable madmen, but the name resonates with readers and adds to the creep factor Kim finds.

Seeing the US for the first time, Kim’s accent is remarked upon, but DNA shows she really is Sammy Went. She has an entire family she doesn’t remember. Who took her and why becomes her driving force as she visits people and tries to get to the bottom of a life she’s forgotten.

Alternating between NOW, Kim’s first person account, and third person accounts of THEN, when Sammy was taken, make this a most interesting and creative way to tell this story. The Church of the Light Within, a Pentecostal snake-wielding congregation, held sway over a good portion of the town’s inhabitants when Sammy was taken. Being different, or trying to leave the fold, wouldn’t have been easy when Sammy was kidnapped.

Parsing out the historical details adds to the tension, and armchair detectives will swear they’ve worked things out–until a final twist shows they’re not quite there.

The sustained tension is impressive, with shifting points of view adding to the intensity. This is elevated psychological suspense, with its crackerjack pace and all-too believable characters that will not only have readers glued to the page, but have them anticipating White’s next novel. Highly recommended.

 

Fiona Barton: The Suspect Tuesday, Jan 22 2019 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed and thriller Auntie M Writes Crime 12:31 am

Fiona Barton returns with her series featuring reporter Kate Waters, along with detective Bob Sparkes, in a startling third novel that kept Auntie M up all night to finish it. The Suspect is that good and that compelling. Once it’s started, readers won’t be able to stop.

When two girls go missing in Thailand, Bob reaches out to Kate to involve the press. This hits close to home, as Kate’s son Jake dropped out of university two years ago to travel in Thailand and has rarely been heard from since.

Kate soon finds herself on the way to Thailand to investigate a fire that involves the girls, but also finds to her surprise and dismay that Jake might have been on the premises at the time. Turning her usual position on its head, Kate soon finds she is the one being hounded by her reporter colleagues, not all well-meaning, as she tries to find her son while investigating what happened to the girls.

Things escalate, if that’s possible, from there. The parents of both girls have very different reactions to the situation. Social media posts from one of the girls tracks their trip, but is this the reality?

It’s a complicated situation, one that explores the complexities of families,husbands and wives, sons and mothers, and loss and grief, alongside one humdinger of a thriller. No character is left untouched by this story. The inner voices of each character ring true in a moving and realistic way that will bring a catch to your breath. It’s a complicated tour de force of emotions and situations, a beautifully written novel that delves into the psychology of us all.

By turning the tables on Kate and involving her own family, the reporter who usually tells other peoples stories must acknowledge that we can’t really know the people we love totally and completely. Highly recommended.

 

Joanna Schaffhausen: No Mercy Friday, Jan 18 2019 

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

Schaffhausen brings back tenacious police officer Ellery Hathaway in No Mercy, the follow-up to The Vanishing Season with FBI profiler Reed Markham. Readers will pick up on the action from the last book with Ellery on forced leave.

After shooting a murderer, and refusing to apologize for it, political correctness has forced Ellery into group therapy. Not a people person to start with due to her childhood horrors, she has difficulty getting close to people and this is a kind of torture for her.

Two people there come to her attention: a wheelchair-bound woman, scarred from the fire that cost her young toddler’s life decades ago, and a young woman whose life has been changed forever after a brutal in-home rape.

Ellery turns to Markham on both counts, the man who freed her from a killer’s closet when she near death as a child. The event tied the two together in a way that neither has tried to investigate–until now, when the threat to Ellery is raised in a way she might not survive.

With Ellery determined to explore both of these cases, divorced father Markham finds himself involved at a level that may cost him the promotion that would let him spend more time with his beloved daughter, especially when his boss and mentor’s former actions are called into question.

The flawed Ellery allows affection only from her adorable basset hound, Bump. Along with Markham, both unusual characters do more than carry this suspenseful plot. With fast pacing as the two cases heat up, Ellery is never far from the memories of her own violent past.

 

Stefan Ahnhem: Eighteen Below Thursday, Jan 10 2019 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:14 am


Stefan Ahnhem’s Fabian Risk novels have a growing audience for the international bestelling author. His third, Eighteen Below, brings the same twisted plot to the Swedish detective and his well-drawn team.

Risk has always been torn between his family and his job, and this dilemna takes center stage with a serial killer on the streets of Helsingborg. The opening is particularly strong, bringing a whiff of the monster they are dealing with, slotted alongside the head of the crime squad, Tuvesson, who can’t get over her divorce and is drinking too much.

There are more secrets within the team, but they often must take a back seat when dealing with the evil at work here, for most victims are found to have been frozen alive at eighteen below, and their identity taken over for financial gain.

How Risk and his team, with great personal jeopardy, must uncover who is behind this sophisticated scheme and stop it.

There’s a lot of darkness here, and the resolution, while it answers some questions, raises different ones for the next book. An intricate plot will have readers glued to the book.

 

Louisa Luna: Two Girls Down Wednesday, Jan 9 2019 

complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for and new series and suspense thriller Auntie M Writes Crime 12:42 am

Louisa Luna’s knockout Two Girl’s Down introduces two highly original characters readers will want to follow.

California PI Alice Vega finds herself on a plane to a small town in Pennsylannia when two young girls disappear. Having built up a reputation for finding missing children, the girl’s aunt has contacted Vega to assist the local police.

Max Caplan is a disgraced cop trying to make a living as a PI while raising teenaged daughter, Nell, after a divorce. When Vega contacts him to be her local contact and work the case with her, an unlikely partnership develops.

The local police are less than helpful, and with Cap’s history, the two strike out on their own at first. With the FBI’s invovlement, an uneasy truce is struck on sharing information and the two go to town.

Vega is unlike any other investigator Cap has known. Tough and smart, strong and feisty, she has contacts he doesn’t. But Cap has the local knowledge she needs as the fast plot crackles with suspense.

All of the characters are well-drawn, from the distraught family to the witnesses the duo encounter. It’s a read that will keep you rooted to the page, cinematic in its detailed view. You can hear the screenwriters sharpening their pencils.

The twists keep coming with an ending that flips back on itself and brings even more surprises. Readers will be clamoring for more Vega and Cap. This is Auntie M’s first Highly Recommended of 2019.

 

Sarah Ward: The Shrouded Path Monday, Dec 31 2018 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:26 am


Almost Happy New Year to Auntie M’s readers, and she leaves you for 2018 with one of her favorite reads of this year.

Sarah Ward’s newest DC Childs mystery, The Shrouded Path, has led the Guardian to note: “Like Ann Cleeves . . . Ward has a gift for the macabre.”

Auntie M hadn’t really thought of Ward’s series that way, but she supposed it fits, as that sort of creepyiness that infiltrates the best of Cleeves work is at play in this series, too.

The plot centers around events of 1957, with some details dropped in from that time period alerting the readers to a well, macabre incident that happened then but isn’t made clear until near the end of the book. All in good time . . .

For DC Connie Childs, getting used to DI Matthews covering for DI Sadler, having a staycation, news that an elderly woman has been found dead sitting upright in her own living room sounds like nothing more than a routine death, if death can ever be routine to the person whose died. Then why does Connie feel like she should pursue the matter? Is it simple boredom, or a wish to impress their new DC, Peter Dahl?

At the same time, Mina Kemp, a gardener known locally as the Land Girl, has been visiting her dying mother in hospital. When her mother becomes agitated over a girl known as Valerie, it soon becomes apparent that to ease her mother’s mind, she must find this Valerie, whom her mum keeps insisting has visited her. But then the oddest thing happens. Mina’s mum confesses Valerie is dead.

With Connie using her instincts to push on the investigation, a second death of an eldery woman comes to light, and when it seems the two women knew each other, Connie and Peter Dahl are alert to the connection. And then a third woman dies, and this time there can be no pretending this was a natural death, especially when she’s linked to the other two women.

With tales of old, secrets kept, and people who’ve learned to cope moving on, even Sadler will be surprised at the turn of events in this fully realized, compelling mystery. A strong entry in a fine series, this one just keeps getting better and better, and earns Auntie M’s ‘highly recommended rating’ for the last day of 2018.

 

Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind Tuesday, Dec 25 2018 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:33 am


Merry Christmas to all of Auntie M’s readers, and Happy Holidays if you celebrate another.

And the merriest of holidays to readers everywhere for Louise Penny’s newest, Kingdom of the Blind, a holiday gift to her readers everywhere that many thought wouldn’t occur this year.

No one would have blamed Penny for not giving us an Inspector Gamache book this year after the death of her beloved husband, Michael, the model for Armand Gamache. And indeed while it is later than her usual August publication, it’s a wonder and a delight she found the courage and stamina to write at all. So thank you to Louise Penny for giving her readers another Gamache to savor and enjoy.

With Gamache on suspension and still being investigated after the events of last year’s Glass Houses, the detective is enjoying Three Pines and his lovely wife, Reine-Marie, but is intrigued when a letter arrives expecting him to be present at an old farmhouse outside of town. Derelict and looking ready to collapse, it is there he meets, to his surprise, his good friend, bookstore owner and former psychologist Myrna Landers, also summoned, plus a rather eccentric young builder named Benedict.

All three are puzzled to learn they have been named the liquidators, or executors we would say in the US, of the will of a local cleaning woman most knew by sight, who liked to be called “the Baroness.”

Why did Bertha Baumgartner entrust the liquidation of her estate to three people she barely knew? And what of the odd bequests in the will itself?

What starts out as an oddity soon turns into tragedy when a body is found, connected to the old woman, and under most unusual circumstances. While the case begins for some, and leads to surprising quarters, Gamache is still bound up in trying to find the opiods he allowed to be brought into Quebec in order to end the large US-Quebec cartel operating in the area.

It’s why he’s on suspension, and with the deadly drug ready to hit the streets, the reason he’s racing against time, using any means possible to find the location of the drug. And he will find help in a most unlikely quarter, but at what cost to himself, his career, and others he cares about?

In her books Penny always manages to bring tears to Auntie M’s eyes, and this one is no exception. As the climax approaches with tremendous suspense, readers will be flipping pages wildly to seek the result.

With her keen ability to use Gamache to illustrate her characters as he sees them, readers become entwined with even the most secondary character and their outcomes. And to those who are repeat characters, readers attach a deep affection and interest in their lives.

While able to pierce the darkest parts of a human soul, Penny has a unique gift that allows those holes to let in the light and grace deep within us all.

Highly Recommended~

 

Holiday Historicals: More great gifts Saturday, Dec 15 2018 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and historical saga and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:52 am

Post #2 of Auntie M’s holiday suggestions, today she offers several set in other eras for that person on your list who likes a change of time period.


Will Thomas’s Barker and Llewelyn series is a favorite of Auntie M’s and Blood is Blood a strong entry. In Victorian London, the private enquiry agents are readying themselves for the younger Llewelyn’s wedding when their offices near Parliament are bombed. The damage to the building is severe and Barker is lucky to be alive.

With Barker in hospital and not being charitable about it, it will be up to Llewelyn to take on the role his mentor would fill, directing the investigation. He’s not helped by the surprise turnup of Barker’s brother, Caleb, who turns up from the US and tries to help–or does he? Working his way through a list he’s compiled of Barker’s enemies who might be behind the bombing, it soon becomes obvious that these same enemies are being picked off.

Throw in a bride who’s suddenly unsure of her soon-to-be husband’s occupation, a lovely young woman who just might be deceitful, and that brother who might or might not be invovled, and you have all the ingredients for a first class mystery.


Karen Odden’s A Dangerous Duet takes readers to Victorian Soho where a young female pianist must face a mystery while she tries to overcome the mores of the day.

With a brother, Matthew, in Scotland Yard, and a family history that discourages her interest, Nell Hallam’s goal is to attend the Royal Academy of Music. To earn her tuition, she plays piano–brilliantly–at a music hall. Disguised as a man, sneaking out her house at night to her job, Nell soon finds the lively atmosphere and different performers suit her, as does the the owner’s son, Jack, until the night another young woman performer is found dead in an alley. When Nell becomes involved in London’s underworld, she also entangles herself in her brother’s investigation.

A tough choice follows when Matthew has Jack in his sights. Filled with realistic details of the Victorain music halls and crimes of the day, London’s seedier side of town illustrates the danger and vitality that made it so fascinating.

Dangerous to Know is Renee Patrick’s second mystery featuring Edith Head and social secretary to the stars, Lillian Frost. Readers enjoying old-world Hollywood will enjoy this story, set in 1938, with the shadow of WWII hanging over everyone.

There’s something for everyone here, with appearances by Marlene Dietrich, suspicious of the Third Reich, when Jack Benny and George Burns face smuggling charges, and a talented visiting composer goes missing. Billy Wilder, Dorothy Lamour and Greta Garbo, in addition to others at Paramount, show up in cameos. It’s a world of beautiful gowns and secrets behind old movies we still adore when Lillian tries to find the composer and instead finds herself embroiled in a murder.

Great fun and packed with old gossip and real details that are fascinating and show the depth of research the married authors bring to the series.

 

Cozy Christmas: Cozies for Holiday gift-giving Wednesday, Dec 12 2018 

amateur sleuth and complex mystery and Continued series winner and debut and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:05 am

Around the holidays, Auntie M likes to give her readers choices for great gift books for those on their list. No matter what holiday you celebrate, a new book holds the promise of a story yet to be told. Today we’re talking cozies:


MB Shaw’s new series debuts with Murder at the Mill, where artist Iris Grey, coping with a disintergrating marriage, rents a house to give herself mental breathing space. Enjoying the nature-filled area and sketching soon give way to a commission to paint the portrait of her cottage’s owner, celebrated crime writer Dominic Wetherby. Iris meets the extended family and more at the Christmas Eve party the Wetherby’s hold.

Becoming entangled with the entire Wetherby family, the idyllis Hampshire village soon turns nightmarish after the youngest son finds a body in the water on Christmas Day. Was this an accident or a murder? Attracted to the family attorney, Iris finds herself sleuthing when she becomes frustrated with the local police, just as she soon feels herself being stalked.

A terrific puzzle and an engaging start to a new series.


Ellen Crosby’s newest in her Wine Country series, Harvest of Secrets, takes readers to Virginia and the Montgomery Estate Vineyards during their busy season. Mixing an unearthed skull on Lucie Montgomery’s family property with a modern mystery, Lucie also has a new murder to contend with when shortly after arriving in the area at a neighboring vineyard, head winemaker Jean-Claude de Marignac is found dead.

The prime suspect is an immigrant worker, Miguel Otero, who had quarreled with the new winemaker. But with Lucie’s own immigrant helped ready to revolt during the harvest, she plunges into figuring out the real culprit. It doesn’t help that the dead man was one of Lucie’s first crushes decades ago.

A nice mix of old and new mysteries, with Lucie facing buried secrets.


The 27th Agatha Raisin mystery, Dead Ringer, features all of MC Beaton’s usual wit and eccentric characters. The Bishop’s visit means the bellringers are practicing up a storm when Agatha manages to convince the lawyer Julian Brody of their team to hire her to investigate the Bishop’s missing fiancee`. Local heiress Jennifer Toynby disappearance years ago, with no body found, remains unsolved.

But that’s not the only thing occupying Agatha. There’s the body of the local policeman discovered in the crypt; one of the bellringers twins is murdered near the church; and a journalist who was once briefly Agatha’s lover is found dead in her very own sitting room. Just how is the Bishop connected to these deaths?

Now a British TV show, the Agatha Raisin series remains a favorite and a classic cozy series.

From its charming cover to the the cast of cats in the characters, Melissa Daley’s Christmas at the Cat Cafe` glows with all that is merry and bright. Set in the town of Stourton-on-the-Hill, owner Debbie allows her sister to move in after a heartbreak. But that doesn’t sit well with the cat side of the home, Molly and her three kittens, who are soon at the mercy of Linda’s dog, Beau. Things go from bad to worse when another cat threatens Molly’s home ground.

With Molly’s point of view at the forefront, this tale is a holiday delight for cat and animal lovers.

 

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