Louise Penny: The Nature of the Beast Tuesday, Aug 25 2015 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:40 am

Nature Beast
Readers of this blog know that Auntie M is a huge fan of Louise Penny’s series. She thinks if he were real she could marry Inspector Gamache, even in his retirement!

But is retirement really for Gamache or his wife, Reine-Marie? That’s the question the two are asking themselves as they enjoy their home in Three Pines. They spend their days involved in the rhythm of the village, enjoying Myrna’s bookstore, helping Clara with her grief, eating at the Bistro. There is a play being cast amongst the villagers, and the stories that 9 yr-old Laurent Lepage tells whomever who will listen, big whoppers of walking trees and alien invasions.

So it’s not a huge surprise that when the small boy with the big imagination he runs into the bistro with his story of a giant monster and an even bigger weapon hidden in the woods, that his story is passed off as one more day of the antics of the boy who cried wolf. Until Laurent disappears…

His body is found in the woods, a victim of an apparent biking accident. But something about the death appears off, and Inspt. Gamache finds himself asked to consult on the case after he insists the boy was murdered.

With his son-in-law Jean Guy Beauvoir on the case and a surprising new head of the Surete’, Gamache will assist them as they stumble deeply into the woods on the hunt of a murderer–and come upon a secret so surprising that it will turn the village on its head.

This secret will draw outsiders to the village as an old crime becomes the reason for the new one–and then there is a second murder, and Inspt. Gamache knows that the secrets of the past have come back to haunt those still living in Three Pines.

Penny consistently writes an absorbing book, and this entry is no exception. Her characters are always many-layered, complex individuals, and her writing style allows readers to see the story from many points of view.

Tackling an unusual subject, readers will be transported back to the village and its inhabitants as they do battle with secrets held and kept for far too many years. Highly recommended.

 

Across the Pond Winners: Casey, Donoghue, Robinson, Williams Saturday, Aug 22 2015 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:46 am

Auntie M would like to mention that her second Nora Tierney Mystery, THE GREEN REMAINS, has won First Place in the Mystery and Mayhem Awards given by Chanticleer Media for BEST CLASSIC BRITISH COZY. Auntie M doesn’t use the term cozy herself: she describes hers as a mix of amateur sleuth and police procedural. But there’s no question her murders are set in small communities and that the puzzle is the highlight, not gore and violence. She’s not writing about psychopaths or serial killers (although she does enjoy reads that do), but rather she’s interested in what motive would allow an otherwise reasonable person to feel it’s reasonable to take another life.

In a related note, she’s also debuting her second series this month. The first Trudy Genova Manhattan Mystery, DEATH UNSCRIPTED, will be in print shortly in hard copy and ebook. Here’s a peek at the cover:
Death Unscripted cover

Frequent readers of this blog know that the Nora Tierney’s are set in England, Auntie M features a host of authors from across the pond. Part of this is because she enjoys reading these books and they keep her mind in the UK when she’s writing. But even more is her desire to turn American readers on to great crime fiction they may be missing by not knowing of these authors.

Here are a few of her recent favorite reads:
The Kill

The Kill is Jane Casey’s fifth Maeve Kerrigan mystery and these procedurals keep getting stronger and stronger.

A wedding reception for a colleague is interrupted when Maeve and her Detective Inspector Josh Derwent are called back to London for a most unusual case: the murder of a fellow policeman in a park, in what could only be called a compromising position.

One of the highlights of the series is the abrasive Derwent and how Maeve handles and defends him. The two are surprised at the reaction of the victim’s wife and even his daughter when told the news. They have the feeling they are keeping things back from the investigators, and as their case heats up, they soon realize they are not the only ones with secrets to hide.

And Maeve find herself torn with the secret she knows about her boss, Superintendent Godley, whom she once admired. Things will come to a head in that direction in this taut and complex mystery that won’t disappoint.

no place to die

Darker and grittier is the second offering from Claire Donoghue in No Place to Die.

This second mystery featuring DS Jane Bennett opens where Never Look Back left off, and things are still in upheaval after the lousy end of that case for Jane and her boss, Mike Lockyer. Feeling the rift between them, his inability to concentrate on the work in hand heavily impact them both when their friend, retired police, goes missing.

Some of the creepiest scenes are set in the underground tombs that are found after a young woman’s body is found one, apparently buried alive and watched by a camera feed.

Once the woman is identified, other tombs are discovered and the threads appear to lead to a local college and its psychology department. And then another young woman is taken and may still be alive, but can Jane and Lockyer find her in time to save her? And who is behind this?

Surprising and shocking at the end, Donoguhe is one who readers should add to their reading lists.

Dark Places
Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks are repeat favorites and this 22nd outing is no exception with In the Dark Places, also Abattoir Blues in the UK version. It boggles the mind to think of an author who can consistently write creative and entertaining mysteries time after time, yet Robinson never disappoints.

An ex-soldier walking his dog, recovering from injuries that leave him limping, is annoyed when his dog goes under a fence and disappears inside an abandoned hanger. When the dog refuses to return and barks consistently, Terry Gilchrist has not choice but to find his way inside and see what’s troubling Peaches.

He finds the dog circling and sniffing and barking around a stain that can only be blood.

In a seemingly unrelated incident, a missing van leads Banks and his team into the countryside. Then a delivery truck falls over a cliff during bad weather and uncover the driver, killed on impact… and his grisly cargo: in addition to the dead animals he was tasked with collecting they find another body, dead before the crash.

Banks will have one of his toughest cases to crack in this repeat winner. Annie Cabot is back, and a nice side story features DS Winsome Jackson.

Black Valley

Black Valley is Charlotte Williams’ followup to The House on the Cliff, which introduced Welsh psychologist Jessica Mayhew.

In this outing Jessica is separated from her husband as they try to decide if their marriage is over. She feels strangely numb to emotions and feelings as she listens all day long to her patients personal drama. So she’s when surprised shortly after said husband confesses to having a relationship with a younger newsreader, that she’s attracted to a stranger she meets at an art exhibit.

That she’s there at all is down to the exhibit’s connection to her newest patient, artist Elinor Powell. Elinor presents with a bad bout of claustrophobia that hits her after her mother is murdered in Elinor’s art studio. A twin, she also is developing paranoid ideation about her sister and brother-in-law, an art dealer whose business may not quite be as above board as she’d like the public to believe.

The issue revolves around a reclusive artist who seems to be the next big thing in the art world. Refusing to give interviews, the unschooled young man nevertheless has captured his share of attention with his huge, brooding canvasses that echo the miners and their broken lives.

The hills of Wales outside Cardiff come alive under Williams skillful retelling, the countryside, lovely and nature-filled during the day, turns bleak and uncompromising at night, filled with caves and towers that haunt the landscape–and figure in the rushing climax as Jessica tries to find the truth about the ghosts who haunt Elinor Powell.

The writing is skillful and the psychological aspect well-handled. Therefore, it comes as a painful surprise to learn that shortly after finishing the first draft of this novel, Williams was diagnosed with breast cancer and died at the age of 59. Sadly, there will be no more Jessica Mayhew thrillers, but the two that are in print are worth readers’ time and investigation.

Late Scholar

And just to remind readers of last year’s terrific Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mystery by Jill Paton Walsh, The Late Scholar is now available in paperback. This installment finds the duo adjusting after World War II and to the growth of their two boys when they are called to Peter’s alma mater, St. Severin’s at Oxford, to unravel a perplexing situation: the faculty and its warden have been unable to agree on selling a rare manuscript to keep St. Severin’s open, and now the warden has vanished. Paton Walsh captures the tone and language of the time and of these two sparkling characters and does Sayers proud.

 

Linda Castillo: After the Storm Tuesday, Aug 18 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:19 am

After the Storm

Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series is a consistent favorite with readers for compelling thrillers featuring the ex-Amish midwestern Chief of Police. After the Storm, continues in the same vein, where the beauty of the area almost heightens the ugly crimes Kate faces.

The tension quickly builds with a tornado heading through Painters Mill, and in the ugly aftermath as Boy Scout help with clean up efforts, human remains are discovered.

Kate must determine the identity and cause of death, which is gruesome indeed, and will have far-reaching consequences for Kate as well as the tight-knit community.

Kate’s personal life is a continues to evolve across the books. Her relationship with State Agent John Tomasetti has reached a new level – and new hurdles are put in their path as they adjust to living together. Kate’s supporting cast is solid and dedicated to their Chief, while Kate’s personal conflicts between the community she was raised in and the world she now lives in provide a great secondary story line.

Meanwhile, a killer waits in the shadows to protect family secrets.

Castillo’s use of details bring the Amish settings, culture and language to life. The series is driven as much by the characters as by the cases Kate must solve. Another strong entry in a consistently strong series.

 

Michael Wallace: Not Death, But Love Sunday, Aug 16 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:55 am

While Auntie M is attending St Hilda’s Mystery and Crime Conference in Oxford, please welcome California author Michael Wallace, who will describe the genesis of his third mystery, Not Death, But Love:
Not Death,But Love

The Book That Wanted to Be Written

Most authors, I’m guessing, are carrying around several unwritten books in their heads. Typically we have an idea of which one will get written next, but sometimes one of the stories insists on muscling its way from the back of the queue to the front.

Something rather like that took place with my third Quill Gordon mystery, Not Death, But Love, which was published on Amazon May 27. This wasn’t originally going to be the third book in the series, but things happened.

In 2012 I was hired by a family foundation to write the family’s history. It’s one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, because it paid generously and the work was fascinating. By the end of it, I felt the long-deceased family members had come alive inside my head and that I was able to convey a reasonably good sense of them to the readers.

In the course of that work, I came across several things that were a surprise to the people who hired me. There were no terrible scandals, but there were lawsuits and family schisms they hadn’t known about until I started digging. At the time, I was simultaneously working on my second mystery, Wash Her Guilt Away, and at some point it occurred to me that a family history with a deep secret — one worth killing to keep — could make the basis for a good mystery.

One of my plans for a future book had been a story centering on a controversial land-use plan, something that would make use of the knowledge I picked up working as a consultant for Wells Fargo Bank and The Home Depot more than a decade ago. That one had been on the back burner, but I decided to combine ideas to make the land development part of the family history, and was off to the races.

When I was working on the real family history, I often lamented that none of the family members had kept journals (at least none that had survived). I decided to give my murder victim, a retired English teacher named Charlotte London, a journal. It was originally supposed to provide a set of clues to complement those in the family history, but it ended up being much more than that.

Simply put, in the course of creating the journal sections, I discovered that Charlotte had come to life most vividly, and, surprisingly to me, became one of the most dominant and complex characters in the book. Not to be gooey, but I got to be rather fond of her, and I’m hoping the book’s readers will, too.

The history aspect carried through the rest of the book as well. I found myself wondering about, and inventing, histories of various elements of the book. These included the lake, the Italian restaurant where the characters ate dinner, the Rotary Club, where community and political alliances were cemented, and the town where the story was set. Such details, I feel, are what add richness to a book. They can often be what a reader remembers long after he or she has forgotten whodunit.
book cover 2 first proof revised

MikeWallaceJPG

MICHAEL WALLACE is a native and lifelong resident of California. He received an A.B. degree in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, worked for 19 years as a daily newspaper reporter and editor, and has had a long second career as a public relations and publications consultant. He has been an avid reader of mysteries since childhood and a fly fisherman for more than three decades. He lives in the Monterey Bay area with his wife, Linda Ogren, a university lecturer in biology. Their son, Nick, is in the army.

cover_ebook
LINKS The McHenry Inheritance Book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008OAODZ6 Video: http://youtu.be/qeUj3R4mf_Y Wash Her Guilt Away Book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K1DOV56 Video: http://youtu.be/m1Hqg11YJ0o Not Death, But Love Book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U5LEFHS Video: In production Website: http://www.quillgordonmystery.com Blog: http://www.outofglendale.blogspot.com Twitter: @Qgordonnovel Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MikeWallaceMysteryWriter

 

Steph Cha: Dead Soon Enough Friday, Aug 14 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:53 am

Dead Soon Enough

Steph Cha’s Juniper Song Mysteries feature the unusual Korean-American protagonist who is now a licensed private detective in Dead Soon Enough.

The series with a modern LA noir feel finds Song having her own cases at the newest PI for Lindley and Flores. When she’s hired by Dr. Rubina Gasparian, it’s for a most unique reason: Rubina wants Song to follow her cousin, Lusig, who is acting a surrogate for Rubina and her husband Van, a surgeon. Carrying their baby and remaining stress free and healthy should be Lusig’s primary job right now, as far a Rubina is concerned. For Lusig, that goal has been usurped by looking for her best friend, Nora, missing for a month now.

Lusig, Rubina and Nora are all linked by their Armenian roots. Rubina soon realizes that keeping Lusig safe means moving Song into her home for now and letting her look for Nora in the evenings when she is home to keep an eye on her cousin. Song’s investigative threads for the missing Nora revolve around Nora’s battle to allow a memorial honoring the Armenian genocide by the Turks to be installed.

A Turkish group has been fighting the installation, claiming that the genocide a hundred years ago that coined the term in the first place was a war. Heavily funded, Song suspects more and more that this group had something to do with Nora’s disappearance. Along the way she will visit a strip club, just one situation she finds herself in as she tries to find Nora.

This is a fast-paced mystery that allows Song to deliberate her own feelings about motherhood and where she sees her future heading. There is plenty of action but even more interesting to Auntie M is the way Song is constantly examining herself and her feelings–and just how far she’s prepared to compromise herself to catch a killer.

By the end, long-held secrets will be revealed and just when the reader thinks they know what’s happened, the story turns into itself and Song finds herself in jeopardy.

Cha has a nice way of getting into Song’s head and the series has a visual feel that would translate well to the big screen. Auntie M particularly liked the young lawyer Song comes across and hopes readers will see more of him in the next installment.

 

Scandanavian Summer: Indridason, Sigurdardottir, Brekke Wednesday, Jul 29 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:33 am

Here are some of the best Scandanavian thrillers for your summer reading pleasure:
Reykjavik Nights
After the surprising ending of last year’s Strange Shores, Arnaldur Indirdason is back with Reykjavik Nights, a prequel to the series that explains to readers how Insepctor Erlendur became interested in detecting.

Opening with the young policeman walking a beat on Reykjavik streets, he and his colleagues face the kind of crime you’d expect: drugs, domestic violence, traffic accidents, and a death Erlandur can’t seem to leave alone.

It should be a simple matter: a tramp he knew from his rounds has been found drowned in a ditch, yet the young cop find himself drawn to the case. Talks he’s had with the man in the past haunt him, and he soon finds himself connecting this death to that of a missing woman.

With dogged persistence, Erlandur will trace things to solving the case, and ignite his own future. An interesting way to see how this character became interested in detecting.
SomeoneWatch

Yrsa Sigurdardottir has been called the Queen of Crime with good reason. In Someone to Watch Over Me, she brings lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottire her most interesting case yet.

Jakob has Down’s Syndrome and has been convicted of burning down his assisted living centre, killing five people in the process. He resides now in a secure psychiatric unit, where one of his fellow inmates has hired Thora to clear the boy of the charges and prove his innocence. Her reluctance to take the case is fueled by her distaste for Josteinn Karlsson, child abuser and sociopath, who has inherited funds from his mother to pay her.

Yet she’s strangely drawn to Jakob and as she starts a routine investigation, things don’t add up. It soon becomes clear to Thora that to prove Jakob’s innocence, she must track down the real murderer.

The case of a young hit-and-run victim will become tied to the case, as does the financial collapse of Iceland and it’s affect on Thora’s family life. Readers will become as caught up as Thora as she unravels what really happened on that fateful night.

Monsters Dwell
Jorgen Brekke’s first book introducing Norwegian police detective Odd Singsaker is now in paperback. Where Monsters Dwell connects a US case with one in Norway when there are similar murders in Trondheim and Richmond, Virgina.

US homicide investigator Felicia Stone is soon seconded to Singsaker once the connection is known. Recovering from a divorce and a brain tumor finds Singsaker trying hard to keep up with his team and the American detective. Along the way he becomes friends with an interesting character, a young library researcher, Siri, who will be a continuing character.

Soon the two detectives find they must delve deeply into history, to a sixteenth-century book called The Book of John which has been bound in human skin. The book is thought to be the work a Middle Ages serial killer who stalked Europe.

As they race to find the new killer replicating these centuries-old murders, Felicia and Odd find themselves drawn to each other, which helps to alleviate their grisly investigation. A stunning debut with interesting and creative characters. Read this one first to follow the relationships of the two detectives.

Brekke followed his debut up with this year’s Dreamless:Dreamless
Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker is on the case once again, married now to Felicia Stone. His newest case starts with the killing of a young singer found murdered with an antique music box resting on her body, playing a lullaby that has a familiar ring.

With ties to a letter and events of of late 18th century, the music and the lullaby with have far-reaching consequences for Singsaker and turn out to be the clues Singsaker needs as another young girl is found murdered under similar circumstances. With a third young woman kidnapped, time is running out.

And then his team will be affected just as Felicia disappears. This installment solves the mystery but will leave the reader yearning for more of Singsaker’s story.

 

Elly Griffiths: The Ghost Fields, Ruth Galloway #7 Wednesday, Jul 22 2015 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:55 am

Ghost Fields

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway is one of Auntie M’s favorite characters. Griffiths has created an original, smart woman who is very recognizable to readers as very, very human. In this seventh outing, THE GHOST FIELDS, Ruth is enjoying a summer dig with her archeology students when DCI Nelson asks her to view a crime scene. Seconded to North Norfolk’s Serious Crimes Unit as a forensic archeologist has had a profound effect on Ruth’s personal life in more ways than one.

Nelson explains that a builder, Edward Spens, had equipment digging for a new development in the fields and has found a plane, probably WWII, buried in a field–with a pilot is still inside. The plane is American, probably from the nearby Lockwell Heath airbase, but Ruth feels the dirt around the plane has been more recently disturbed and that the dead man has been posed in the cockpit.

Then Ruth announces that this was not an incident of a downed plane during the war: the pilot sports a bullet hole through the middle of his forehead.

The pilot and the land tie in to the Blackstock family, a disparate group with several generations living in the nearby manor house, others emigrated to the US, and a grandson running a pig farm, which comes into play in a particularly grisly manner.

Complicating Ruth and Nelson’s investigation is the appearance of American documentarian Frank Barker, the academic who Ruth met when filming the program Women Who Kill. Despite an attraction at the time, it’s been over a year since Ruth has heard from Frank, yet here he comes across the pond to head up an American film company and star in a documentary about Norfolk’s deserted airfields, those Ghost Fields as they’re known, and to muddle up Ruth’s investigation and her life.

It will take all of Ruth and Nelson’s smarts and his team’s efforts to unravel the complicated situation that is at the bottom of this mess once it becomes apparent there’s a murderer still on the loose in the Ghost Fields.

Griffiths adds to our interest with a nice interweaving of the lives of repeat characters besides those of Ruth and Nelson. They enhance rather than detract from the business at hand, a meeting of old friends as it were, and add a texture to the very human dramas that play out against the investigation. These atmospheric novels are strong, wonderful reads for any mystery lover. Highly recommended.

 

Cathy Ace: The Case of the Dotty Dowager Sunday, Jul 19 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:41 am

Please welcome Cathy Ace, VP of the Crime Writers of Canada:

the case of the dot#14A450C(1)

Thanks for inviting me to visit, Auntie M – I’m so happy to have the chance to drop by to introduce you to my new characters.

With five Cait Morgan Mysteries in print (#6, THE CORPSE WITH THE DIAMOND HAND, comes out in October 2015) and having just won the Bony Blithe Award for the best Canadian Light Mystery for #4, THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR, I have to admit I have been worrying about how the women of the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries would be accepted, but I’m pleased to say quite a lot of folks are already enjoying spending time with them.

I’ve always relished Downton Abbey, but when I decided to set a group of four female private eyes to work on a case at a stately home I made two big decisions: I realized I wanted a modern-day setting, and to be able to use technology as it’s available now to help solve their puzzling (and quintessentially British) cases; I also made the decision to go back to my home country of Wales for the setting…though I am told the series is perfect for Anglophiles (maybe there’s a word to coin here – Welshophiles?).

THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER is the first novel-length outing for the four women of the WISE Enquiries Agency: one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish and one English (hence the acronym) but, whilst they work well together and effectively use their complementary skill-set, what I’m enjoying is that they are all so different: Carol Hill is a Welsh computer whiz in her mid-thirties, happily married and delightedly pregnant; The Hon. Christine Wilson-Smythe is the brilliant and beautiful daughter of an Irish viscount, who’s fearless in the way only someone who is single and in their twenties can be; Mavis MacDonald is a retired army nurse, a widow in her mid-sixties, she has two grown sons, grandchildren, and an ailing mother in a nursing home close to her family in Scotland; then there’s Annie Parker, born to St. Lucian parents within the sound of Bow Bell–she’s a cockney through and through – her abrasive nature a shield against a world that’s not been too kind to her, and weathering her very sweaty mid- fifties.

Throw in Althea Twyst, the dowager duchess of Chellingworth who, at almost eighty, is just as active as her Jack Russell, McFli, but who might be losing her marbles (according to her son, Henry, the eighteenth duke) and you’ve got four women enquiring into the life of a fifth – who might not take kindly to their interest.

So why not grab yourself a cuppa, and indulge in a delightful romp through the Welsh countryside with these women? Book two in the series, THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER, will be published in the UK in October 2015, and in the US and Canada in February 2016, so, if you enjoy meeting these women, you won’t have to wait long before you can tackle another case with them.

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Cathy Ace is the BC Bestselling author of the Bony Blithe Award-winning Cait Morgan Mysteries and the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries. You can find out more about Cathy and her work at her website: http://cathyace.com/ on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cathy-Ace- Author/318388861616661?ref=hl or on Twitter: @AceCathy

 

Nicola Upson: London Rain Wednesday, Jul 15 2015 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:11 am

London Rain
Nicola Upson’s series featuring Josephine Tey has long been a favorite of Auntie M’s, earning her carefully chosen “highly recommended” rating in each previous novel. In London Rain, Upson brings Tey to London during the glorious Coronation ceremonies of George VI after the agony of the abdication of Edward VIII, yet all of the glitter and pageantry becomes secondary to the murder of one of the BBC’s best-known broadcasters.

Josephine is in London for a BBC radio program of her play Queen of Scots, but she’s not immune to the atmosphere at Broadcasting House, the modern bastion that houses the BBC’s offices and studios. The cool, austere building reflects the icy demeanor inside, ripe with petty jealousies, adultery and enough emotion to make itself known to the sensitive Tey.

Some of the gossip makes Josephine acutely aware of her own personal situation and she resolves to define her relationship better with her partner, Marta, a sensitive topic at the best of times. She’s aware that the atmosphere is controlled by Julian Terry, fellow detective novelist and now the BBC’s director of her play. His brother, John, has a lead role in Tey’s play, yet it’s Lydia Beaumont, who Josephine originally wrote the play for, who has been demoted in the radio play to a minor role, a situation that will add to the strain of the women’s relationship with Marta.

Josepine meets Vivienne Bereford, too, acting editor of the popular publication Radio Times; her husband Anthony Beresford is one of the BBC’s top radio broadcasters. Viv’s sister, Olivia Hanlon, was the owner of a sketchy Soho club, and her drowning death ten years ago is still talked about in some circles with suspicion. But that is the old news; the newer is that Anthony Beresford is having an affair with the actress Millicent Grey, who is playing the Queen in Josephine’s play.

Bereford’s murder is no surprise to readers. When Tey’s friend DCI Archie Penrose is called in to head the case, he finds the politics of the place get in his way. With the Coronation as the backdrop, there will be heightened security, the heady trappings of the event, and the major influx of people into London–all of which frustrate Archie’s investigation.

Josephine and even Marta will become involved in helping him sort out the secrets that have led to this murder, leaving Josephine to wonder about her recklessness in the situation and the guilt it leave her with when there’s an unexpected ending twist–and even more of a twist for Archie.

This is Upson’s sixth Tey novel, and it won’t disappoint, both in its characterizations and in the plotting of a terrific mystery. The period details are perfectly done and provide a lovely backdrop to a literate and well-written story. Highly recommended.

 

Kate Flora: And Grant You Peace Friday, Jul 10 2015 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:45 am

And Grant You Peace
Auntie M owes author Kate Flora an apology: She read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Flora’s Joe Burgess mystery, And Grant You Peace last fall. Then her copy of the book fell behind a stack of many stacked books waiting to be reviewed and was just unearthed. Mea culpa.

Don’t let Auntie M’s tardiness keep you away from this great installment in Flora’s series, that starts out with a fast-paced heart-rending scene and doesn’t let up.

Sitting in his car, waiting for his shift to end, Burgess is ready to go home when a local kid he knows come running up to his door. Jason tells Burgess the nearby mosque is on fire and he can hear screaming from inside. Burgess leaps out of his car, calling the fire department, on the run inside the burning building.

A stranger steps up to help him and the two men tear down a locked door to find a woman and her baby inside the burning closet. His instincts tell Burgess the fire was not accidental, and when he learns the infant has died, Burgess knows the investigation will ratchet up now with the arson unit, fire department investigators and the state fire marshal all digging in along with violent crimes detectives.

But his thoughts turn to the scared young mother, a teenager, who has just lost her child, and gone mute. Who would have locked her and her baby in a closet inside a mosque scrawled with anti-Muslim graffiti and set fire to it? Burgess will work hard to earn her trust and learn her story.

It’s a case that will have Burgess working long hours, despite the chaos of his home situation, where his partner Chris is working and trying to hold down the fort on their newly-created family. Series regulars on Joe’s team Stan Perry, Terry Kyle will aid Burgess along with Remy Aucoin and CID head Vince Melia, as their investigation takes them to the Iman who owned the Somali mosque.

When they try to question one of the Iman’s sons, a car passes, shooting into their faces. And that’s just the start of the trouble Burgess and his team will face as they unravel the story of this young mother and her dead child.

Compellingly told, atmospheric, this proves a great addition to the series.

 

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