Will Thomas’s Barker and Llewelyn series in one one of Auntie M’s favorite historicals with good reason, as his research is meticulous and often based on real events. He returns with the newest in this long-running series with For Services Renderered.
It’s October of 1986, and Barker and Llewelyn, private enquiry agents, have a long established daily routine that is shaken to its very core when their cook, Etienne Dummolard, chef owner at Le Toison d’Or, fails to appear to cook their breakfast. When he is taking his family to Dijon to avoid clashing with his sworn enemy who ate dinner the previous night at his restaurant.
The news is particularly startling because Barker killed Seabastian Nightwine in a duel, yet Eitienne insists he’s alive.
Unfortunately, this turns out to be true. The evil man makes enemies easily and never forgets a grudge. He trained his only daughter to be an assassin, and is dangerous beyond compare as he runs through money and will do anything to earn more, even to kidnapping British citizens who have angered the Qing government years ago in China and still have a reward on their heads. Yet his charm amuses many, including the Prince of Wales, who has not seen his dark side.
So when Barker’s paramour, Lady Phillipa Ashleigh, visits to say she’s received a message from Nightwine, Barker is on instant alert. Coveting Barker’s relationship with Lady Phillipa makes Nightwine doubly treacherous. Soon she and Llewelyn’s wife and young daughter are on their way to Paris, out of harm’s way.
But not before a visitor to their office gives them another, possibly related, case. Dr. James Cantlie begs the two detectives to find his missing friend, a young doctor he mentored who has disappeared, named Sun Yat-Sen.
What follows is a double espionage situation with Nightwine at their heels as the men try to find the young kidnapped doctor, born in China but raised in Hawaii. Learning that the Qing government has declared a price on the man’s head for a letter he sent to the government complaining of their methods, Barker suspects Nightwine is at the heart of the man’s disappearance.
Their investigation will take the two men into the heart of the Cbinese embassy who are holding the young doctor, with Nightwine planning to smuggle him out of England to face execution in China. Only the wits and wiles of Barker and Llewelyn can stop this plan from coming to fruition.
Using Llewelyn as narrator adds an element of the Welshman’s pithy observations in this wholly entertaining novel.
How does a multi-award-winning author keep a series interesting through 39 books?
By developing varied, quirky, and interesting characters, then placing them in a charming rural setting, and filling her stories with tidbits about nature, all wrapped up in a mystery that is not so much needing to be solved as proving what lead protagonist Meg Langslow suspects all along.
The blackmsith is hoping for some forge time when her family’s good friend Ragnar Ragnarsen calls with an urgent plea: can she and her family help with the many volunteers needed to care for fifty horses suddenly displaced from their equine rescue?
All of Meg’s family become involved, including her twin teen boys, her zookeeper father, her doctor dad, and her theatre director husband. Ragnar’s estate closely resembles a moated castle, complete with many of Meg’s gothic iron decorative and useful items on display. The huge fields surrounding the estate are soon broken into staging areas for the horses, many who have just been rescued from auctions and need to be triaged, while others need room to roam.
The rescue farm’s owner recently died without leaving a will, forcing Hoof and Hearth to temporarily rehome the horses as his two sons argue the legalities. While older son Abel is in favor of the rescue on the land, the younger, George, wants to sell the land for development, and isn’t above using threats and shady characters to reinforce his position.
Meg’s family camp out to keep watch over the horses after George’s thugs appear—until one of them is found murdered, and suspicion falls squarely on Abel.
Now Meg must juggle watching her family and the horses, while she helps to unmask a killer, and learns how to care and cajole horses of all personalities, including one due to deliver any minute.
The research Andrew’s brings into every aspect of a horse’s life make this story, along with its humorous bent, an entertaining read with this satisfying entry.
Gillian McAllister might have been a lawyer, but since she became a full time writer, she has a string of thrillers to claim: Wrong Place Wrong Time; Famous Last Words; Just Another Missing Person, and The Good Sister are just a partial list of her hits.
When her newest, Caller Unknown, was offered to me for review, Auntie M jumped at the chance to read it.
Simone has left her husband, Damien, in England to run their restaurant so she can meet their daughter, Lucy for a week together, after Lucy has spent the summer at a Texas camp learning to sing before her RADA course starts. It’s mother-daughter time Simone is looking forward to, as the thought of watching her daughter start the next stage of her life courses through her. She knows this is the natural order of things, but she’s having a hard time letting go.
Then the unthinkable happens: after one night together in a cabin, Lucy is kidnapped, a ransom demanded, and Simone’s entire life changes. Damien flies over, but she lies to him that she’s called the police in, as the kidnappers assured her that doing so would cause her daughter’s death. She’s sent a sad proof of life video, showing Lucy with her hands bound behind her back.
This is when McAllister swiftly turns the plot on hits head, with Simone as Mother Warrior, desperately trying anything to save her daughter. There will be shootings, murder, and a drug deal before the heady climax. The twists come fast as the action ramps up until an unbelieveable climax leaves the reader feeling almost bereft, but in awe of Simone’s strength—until a brilliant last sharp turns brings everything into focus.
A meditation on a mother’s inexhaustible love, and the length’s she will go to for her daughter. Stunning.
The third Cal Hooper novel finds the intrepid Chicago detective, now retired, thick in the midst of an unwanted investigation in his rural West Irish town of Ardnakelty.
A lovely young woman, Rachel Holohan, is on the cusp of an engagement to Tommy Moynihan’s Eugene. The local business man has his fingers in so many projects he has half the town beholden to him and the other half scared of him.
So when Rachel’s body is found in the river, her death sets off a chain of events that will have the town, Cal and his fiancee, Lena, and his ward Trey Reddy, more involved than any of them want.
And when Cal’s investigation gets too close to revealing Tommy’s underhanded machinations that threaten the entire town, the gloves are off as the two men match wits, with Tommy having the weight to spread rumors about Cal and Lena, while his grief-stricken son watches from the sidelines.
French’s ability to weave these disparate characters is on full display here, with the townspeople aiding or detracting, depending on whose side they’re on. Cal’s loyalty to his new neighbors will be severely tested, and impact his relationship with Lena. The emotions run high as Cal continues to find out the truth, and find justice for Rachel, sometimes forgotten as a pawn in the fight that ensues.
No one creates atmosphere and uses her setting to her advantage as much as French. Her use of language pulls the reader in to the unfamiliar landscape, and she evokes a mood with words. Her plot is cleverly constructed, too, and as the pain of loss doubles, a sense of impending doom falls over the town. It will take Cal and his mismatched band of supporters to find the real justice at the end of the day.
A brilliant end to the trilogy of Cal Hooper stories. While The Keeper certainly can be read as a standalone, if you haven’t read them all, (The Searcher, The Hunter) Auntie M urges you to do so if you are a fan of well-written, absorbing stories about people who jump off the page.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Quinn’s Chet and Bernie Mysteries until I opened the first page and was immediately sucked in.
It takes a master author to write an entire book—or should I say series, as this is the 17th in this creative series—in the voice and point of a view of a dog.
Now I hasten to add right up front that Chet is not just any ordinary dog, not at all, a point he makes repeatedly. He is one half of the Little Detective Agency, the other half being his owner, Bernie Little, veteran war hero and private investigator.
Together, in a finely tuned partnership, Chet reads Bernie’s signals, using his prodigious nose to scent things out in their cases, including where people have been, and who they’ve been in contact with—which makes this particular new case right up their alley.
The internet sensation Miss Kitty and her owner, young Bitty, are bereft when Miss Kitty disappears. Chet and Bernie are soon on the hunt to find her as her huge following and new sponsors demand more content featuring the suave cat who sits on a purple pillow. A house cat, has Miss Kitty escaped and found freedom intoxicating? Or is there a more sinister reason for her disappearance, namely, a catnapping . . .
With one witness a pig named Señor Piggy, and the human witnesses all as likely to tell a lie as the truth, Chet and Bernie have their work cut out for them. Along the way there will be a murder or two, a few Miss Kitty scents and sightings, and an undersheriff who at first suspects Bernie of at least one of the murders.
The plot is a classic kidnapping mystery, with characters all finely drawn, including a pair of cowgirls. One of my favorite scenes in the book is how Chet describes their relationship: “Sisters or not sisters? What that all about? . . . Maud and Tish did not smell like sisters. They both smell somewhat oldish, but with more than a little juiciness to them, which you usually don’t get with oldish types. They were both also nice to look at, although their faces were not alike. In fact the closer you looked the more unalike they got…Human love has a special scent. Did you know that? It was the air right now.”
Somehow, Quinn manages to sustain this humorous but often philosophical mental narration of Chet throughout the entire book. His examines human emotions, relationships, moods, and his observations are on point.
No wonder then that I’m smitten with Chet, and you will be, too. Stephen King calls this: “Without a doubt the most original mystery series currently available.”
I recently met Sonny Hudson at the Williamsburg Book Festival, an event I thoroughly enjoyed. If you live anywhere near that lovely area in Virginia, I urge you to attend next year’s event, which featured four speakers plus rooms filled with authors and their books. Since my talk was on what makes a good book cover, I was attracted to those on Sonny’s books.
I’ve asked him to tell us how he came to write his series. Please welcome Sonny Hudson to Auntie M Writes:
Readers ask me all the time where I find the inspiration for my stories, and it’s easy to respond with something generic like ‘inspiration is all around us’. While that’s certainly true, I usually cite two events, one that inspired me to want to write, and the other that was the inspiration for the first book in my Jessica Jansen Thriller series, The Murder Game.
I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a writer, but early in my technology career I took on a new role supporting our global sales force. A small but key part of the job for my team was creating and publishing a newsletter distributed to almost 7,500 people. This quickly became my favorite part of the job, and my teammates took to calling me ‘the guy who never met a blank page that he didn’t want to fill.’ Guilty!
I’ve always been a big fan of murder mysteries, and when a particularly bizarre incident happened to me while traveling for business, it became my inspiration for The Murder Game. I actually used this incident, or at least a fictionalized version of it, in the opening chapters.
While traveling back to Virginia from a trip to California, I was changing planes in Dallas and moving between terminals on the SkyTrain when another passenger dropped their wallet. I was unable to catch them, so I decided to turn it in to the DFW police or TSA when I reached my stop.
I decided to look in the wallet to see if I might find information to have the person paged, and when I looked inside, I was stunned: the wallet was empty except for three different IDs from three different states, with three different names, and three different pictures of the same guy.
My mind immediately went to something criminal—naturally—and I started drafting the book before I even boarded my next flight. That one strange incident inspired a book, which inspired an entire series. I’m glad I was there to experience it!
Sonny Hudson is the acclaimed author of the Jessica Jansen Thriller series, which includes The Murder Game, Glitz. Glamour. Murder., Blood & Vengeance, and Divine Deception. Taut, fast-paced action and incredibly strong, smart, and capable female lead characters grab readers from the very first page. Readers have compared Hudson’s books to top authors like Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta series), J.D. Robb (In Death series), James Patterson (Women’s Murder Club series), and David Baldacci (Mercy series).
Fans of political action and spy thrillers by top writers like Robert Ludlum, Vince Flynn, and Brad Thor will love Hudson’s debut novel, Let the Truth Be Told. This perennial favorite has captivated audiences at events year after year.
Currently residing in Williamsburg, VA, Hudson has transitioned from a long and successful career in the technology sector to providing business and technology consulting to Global 1000 companies and their extensive network of channel partners. When not working or writing, Hudson enjoys cruising on the Chesapeake Bay or exploring the world-class wineries and restaurants of California wine country.
Auntie M has just interviewed her writing colleague, Lauren Small, who specializes in historical novels. Brickhouse Books has published her latest, an odyssey centering on the First Crusade. Welcome Lauren!
Auntie M: You’ve written many historical novels in different eras. What inspired you to choose this particular time period?
LS: My books always come out of my passion for social justice and my belief that by exploring the past, we can better understand the present. I’ve been very concerned in recent years about the rise of white Chirstian nationalism and antisemitism. People seem to be talking a lot about the Crusades. I was prompted to look more into the topic, and became hit with the bug to write about it.
AM: I know you’ve done exhuastive research for Radegonde. Can you describe your research process?
LS: I read everything I can get my hands on, in this case, both histories of the Crusades and testimonials that have come down to us. Luckily, I’d already had the chance to travel to many of the main places where the Crusades took place, such as France, the Rhine Valley, and Jersusalem. I also visited museums to look at artworks and artifacts, and of course the Internet provided information through maps, images, and so on.
AM: Can you explain your character development for Radegonde and the other main characters who tell this story? Did you have difficulty narrowing your focus to her and her circle?
LS: I felt from the beginning that we would experience that Crusade through Radegonde’s eyes. She’s only fifteen years old, with a curiosity to explore the world. I expanded the story by including different kinds of people who took part in Crusades like this: a Jewish scholar, a runaway monk, a Muslim girl, and a formerly enslaved African woman. I especially wanted to focus on women, since I think their voices are often overlooked in history.
AM: Let’s talk process. When you finally sat down to write this, did you work from an outline of high points, write scenes out of order that you knew you’d need, or did the story develop as you wrote?
LS: The story developed as I wrote it, although I always knew it would follow the journey of the Crusade, from northern France to Jerusalem.
AM: How much revision did you have to do for this book?
LS: A ton! I always do a lot of revision—it’s one of my favorite parts of the writing process. This book went through four major drafts, in addition to my reworking individual scenes.
AM: Is there a scene or passage you’re particularly proud of writing?
LS: One of the most important scenes I wrote was the massacre at Mainz. We have a lot of historical information about it, so I had much to draw on. It was a terrible atrocity at the time, but has largely been forgotten. The scene was very hard to write, but in the end I was proud to have done it, to honor the people who died there.
AM: What do you hope wil resonate with readers once they’ve read Radegonde?
LS: I hope they will see how much we can understand about the present by delving into the past. In particular, I hope they will understand why the Crusades are still relevant today.
AM: Please tell us about some of your other historical novels, as they range over different periods.
LS: I do range widely in my work! For instance, I’ve written about my hometown of Baltimore during the First World War era, and about the Nuremburg Doctors’ trial.
AM: What’s your next project? Will it be historical in nature?
LS: Yes, I’m writing a novel inspired by the Medieval Jewish scholar named Maimonides. He lived a fascinating life!
AM: Where can readers find Radegonde and the First Crusade?
LS: I’m very grateful to my publisher, Brickhouse Books, which has done a beautiful job with my book: http://www.brickhousebooks.com.
Lauren Small is a novelist with a strong interests in social justice and the power of historical fiction to illuminate the present. She earned a PhD in Comparative Literature, and is an adjunct assistant professor in pediatrics in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches medical humanities. She has been a guest contributor to the “On Being” blog of American Public Radio and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her previous novels include The Hanging of Ruben Ashford (Brickhouse Books, 2022), and The Eye Begins to See (Ethics Press, 2023).
Berry’s sixth Kate Hamilton mystery keeps the series fresh, utilizing Kate’s antiques expertise and that of her business partner, Ivor Tweedy, in a unique way. Being married to DI Tom Mallory means Kate has an above-average knowledge of murder investigations, too, and has helped Tom in the past.
When an extremely well-preserved body is found at an archeological dig, it’s determined to be from the 14th century, and Kate and Ivor are asked to examine and evaluate the grave goods found buried with the woman’s body, which include a huge, valuable pearl. They meet the team who found the body, composed of varied personalities and talents.
Additionally, Kate is tasked as part of her private investigators work by the wealthy landowner, whose property contains the dig, with unearthing the idenity of the buried woman, who was pregnant at the time of her death. His own wife went missing nine years ago, and a museum of the plague-ridden village was her project, one he has continued in her absence as he struggles with his grief.
Then the lead archeologist, Dr. Simon Sinclair, is found murdered on the site with pearls stuffed in his mouth, and Tom becomes involved while also trying to track a killer in an unrelated death. Sinclair’s murder has numerous suspects, and with Kate on site, Kate works in concert with Tom to obtain inside information that might not surface in a formal police interview.
Berry does a grand job of showing how Kate uses resources and ancient documents to track down the identity of the murdered woman in the midst of Tom’s investigation into the modern murder. Then another set of bones are found to ratchet up the tension. Throw in Kate’s pregnant friend, the local vet and vicar’s wife, and you have a nicely rounded plot with local threads.
The interspersion of the cold cases with the new murder unraveling give rising tension to a well-done climax that makes sense. Don’t miss Berry’s author’s note at the end about the real-life discovery of a medieval body that gave her the storyline idea.
Peter James’s long-running DCI Grace series, now on BritBox in a grand adaptation as Grace, has just published his 22nd in this series, The Hawk is Dead.
The backstory to this novel is fascinating: Her Majesty Queen Camilla, a huge Grace fan, asked him when she was Duchess of Cornwall in 2019 if he couldn’t see a way to bring Sussex-based Grace to London. After kicking the idea around for four years as he worked on other projects already under construction, James figured out a plot what would allow him to bring Grace and a few members of his team to the Palace.
And that kernel of an idea started when James read that the 775 rooms in Buckingham Palace were to undergo a major renovation, which would take place over the course of several years, not just for updating and modernization but for safety reasons. The Royal Collection consists of over a million very valuable art and objects held by The Crown, many in Buckingham Palace.
From that grew the idea for the entire novel, and the beginning of exhaustive research, which included James being given inside tours of the palace, and even learning how to drive a train! Always giving his realistic police procedurals a grand plot, James knocks it out of the park with this one, literally, by taking Grace from his Brighton territory to Buckingham Palace.
His team becomes involved when the Queen is traveling by train to visit hospices along the south coast. Her train must be evacuated after being derailed inside a tunnel. A harrowing scene from the train driver’s point of view brings the accident to life, and as the Queen and a trusted advisor exit the tunnel, shots ring out. While the Queen narrowly misses being assassinated, Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to Their Majesties and one of the most senior members of their household, is killed.
Grace has a nagging feeling the Queen might not have been the intended target, and readers are treated to insights into the workings of the Royal Household, and its pecking order, as well as an extensive treatment of the glories contained within the huge building as the investigation ensues.
With attention turned to the household, when a diary Sir Peregrine kept in code, more matters come to light and soon Grace and his team, especially his long-term bagman DI Branson, must sift through Not-My-King protestors; territorial tiffs with the Met, who want to take over his investigation; and missing artifacts. Then a second body is found…
This was one of the most enjoyable Grace novels to date, and as usual, gives us a window into his home life, too. But James’s intricate plotting with its exploration of life within the royal household make this a gripping story.
From time to time, Auntie M likes to let you in what she’s been reading, not for review, but for her own personal choice. These are some of my favorites, the ones I reach for again and again for a satisfying read:
Steve Cavanagh knocks it out of the park with his new Eddie Flynn legal thriller, Two Kinds of Stranger, which may be his most perfectly twisted plot yet, and he’s a master at it. Eddie is a conman turned lawyer who won’t hesitate to step outside the law to bring justice.
This case comes too close to home when a stalker client threatens his daughter, ex-wife and her new lawyer husband. At the same time, he and his team have taken on the case of a young woman whose life had been about espousing random acts of kindness. In an ironic twist, that same instinct has led to her being poisoned, while her cheating husband and his lover are also poisoned. While the duo die, Ellie Parker manages to survive but is soon charged with their murders, as no one can find the stranger she says she helped who poisoned her, a sociopath working behind the scenes to manipulate her life.
No one except Eddie Flynn. And then his ex-wife’s stalker is killed, and his daughter’s mother and her husband are on trial for that murder. His team is managing two serious trials at the same time, and lines will be crossed with life-changing outcomes. At times you can’t see how he can pull this one off, and Eddie isn’t certain he can, either.
There’s a final extra ending twist that makes it all come full circle—you won’t be able to put this one down. Cavanagh gets NYC and its environs perfectly, which is all the more surprising when you learn he and his family live in Belfast, Ireland. Don’t miss this brilliantly layered novel.
The Marlow Murder Club is currently showing on my Masterpiece Mystery, and Auntie M snapped up the newest installment, a locked room (boat) mystery that weaves a killing around the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society in Murder on the Marlow Belle.
Verity Beresford enlists Judith Potts and her friends to track down her missing husband after the drama society had hired The Marlow Belle for an evening on the river. But no one remembers seeing Oliver Beresford leave the boat.
Then Oliver’s body, complete with bullet holes, washes up downriver, and the three women amateur sleuths are on the hunt. Soon they are knee-deep in the personal lives of the main players, whose secrets they must unearth, as it seems Oliver had a host of enemies.
Cosy mystery crime at its finest with a returning ensemble we’ve grown to love.
Queen Camilla let it be known that Peter James is her favorite author, and so his October book, The Hawk is Dead, has scenes at Buckingham Palace. But One of Us is Dead is out now, so readers who follow Brighton Superintendent Roy Grace can gratefully indulge.
Grace and his familiar team are investigating a series of murders that appear unrelated, but Grace has a that twitch of instinct that tells him they are, despite mushroom poisoning and accidents that may not be what they seem.
At a local funeral, a man enters the church late to see a fellow a few rows ahead of him he knows to be dead–because he gave that man’s eulogy. What these disparate incidents have in common becomes the latest chase to find a canny killer.
Grace’s respect and detail of police procedures is at full mast here, as is his frustration at being behind the desk too much. Another great installment in a long-running series that never disappoints.
I had fears that SJ Bennett’s series featuring Queen Elizabeth would come to an end with the passing of the monarch, but Bennett’s Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series continues with A Death in Diamonds by heading back in time to 1957 with a young Queen finding her voice. And now she’s opened up a host of years to pull from as the series continues.
When two people are murdered and the Queen finds herself used as the alibi for one of the murders, all the while trying to learn her job and her nation’s place in a modern world, it seems that the very advisors she must trust may not always have her best interests at heart.
Her ally becomes Joan McGraw, an ex-Bletchley Park code breaker, discreet and loyal to the Queen, and soon this dynamic duo are running their own investigation. A clever and intriguing way to continue this series, Bennett gets the personalities of the royals involved down pat with nice asides we can well imagine might really have been said. A jewel~
Skelton’s well-plotted series featuring investigative reporter Rebecca Connolly continues with The Hollow Mountain.
Filled with the kind of ironic humor Auntie M enjoys, Rebecca is challenged by Alice Larkin, a dying millionaire and former reporter, to unearth what really happened when her lover died while working as a tunnel tiger on the Hollow Mountain project years ago.
With Alice parsing out her story, Rebecca must use her talents and those of her colleagues to unearth the truth of the hazardous construction as the workers blasted through mountains, under rivers, to create a pass, but she soon finds herself in jeopardy when the secrets she is finding threaten the reputations of those left behind.
Skelton’s series at highly atmospheric in their Scottish settings and the entire series comprise great reads.
Nita Prose’s maid Molly Gray is a wonderful character with a unique take on life whom Prose first debuted in The Maid. Now planing her wedding to chef Juan Manual, she’s been promoted to Head Maid and Special Events Manager at the Regency Grand Hotel, a delightful setting for much of the action of the series.
In The Maid’s Secret, the antiquities show Hidden Treasures is filming an episode at the Regency Grand when a decorated egg Molly brings in to be valued is found to be an antique treasure. At the same time as the television world and Molly’s life is turned upside down, excerpts from her grandmother’s diary explain how the egg came to be in her possession. And then the egg goes missing . . .
It’s a nice device that alternates with the madcap part of the auction process and gives a glimpse–and surprising information–to Molly. As usual, there is a sense of a heartfelt lesson being told.
Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff 