Rhys Bowen: From Cradle to Grave

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Royal Spyness #19

February 1937.  King Edward VIII has abdicated the British throne to be with his beloved Mrs. Simpson in Paris, his brother George VI awaits his coronation, and Lady Georgie is busy enjoying being a new mother and running the country house of her godfather, Sir Hubert. Alas, her peaceful home life is soon destroyed by the arrival of the horrible Nanny Hardbottle, sent by her dreadful sister-in-law Fig to bring Georgie’s life up to Fig’s cold worst-of-British childrearing standards. As if the anti-Mary Poppins isn’t bad enough, Fig herself soon arrives and settles into Georgie’s comfortable house to avoid the worst of the Scottish winter and shows no sign of leaving. read more

Peggy Townsend: The Botanist’s Assistant

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I could not have loved this utterly charming mystery more.  It’s original, it’s well written, it’s well plotted, and it has a wonderful main character in botanist Margaret Finch.  Much like her name, Margaret resembles a large bird (and she is in fact referred to as Big Bird behind her back), and she values order, cleanliness and science above all else.  In her work as a research assistant in a lab, these qualities serve her well.  It’s people she has trouble with, not plants.

The only person she has true respect for is her boss, Dr. Deaver.  When she discovers his body in his office, details seem off to her, details the busy police officer (who is busy ignoring Margaret’s suggestions of poison) seems not to notice.  When Dr. Deaver’s death is declared a heart attack, Margaret knows, in the interest of truth and science, that she must discover what really happened.  In this way, Margaret is similar to all amateur sleuths of every description.  She fits into a narrower category – the neuro divergent detective, someone familiar to fans of detective fiction and TV for many years, from Columbo to Monk to E.J. Copperman’s classic Asperger detective to Nita Prose’s “maid.” All share a quirkiness and while there are many differences, their similarity is the observation of all details. read more

S.J. Bennett: The Queen Who Came in from the Cold

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Her Majesty the Queen Investigates #5

I flat out love this series, as it combines two of my favorite things: the Queen and a good mystery.  The unexpected bonus is Ms. Bennett’s skillful writing – she’s excellent at plotting and character development, and her portrayal of the Queen – chef’s kiss!  The Queen, as portrayed here, is dutiful, intelligent, and possessed of a full measure of curiosity and humor.  My reading about the Queen suggests these things were true.  This series installment is set in 1961, during the space race, the cold war, and the popularity of James Bond. read more

Celeste Connally: Revenge, Served Royal

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Lady Petra Inquires #3

Revenge, Served Royal is the delightful third entry in Celeste Connally’s series Lady Petra Investigates, featuring aristocratic sleuth Lady Petra Forsyth, the daughter of an earl, in Regency England.  Petra is an unconventional woman of her time.  She is fiercely independent and has sworn never to marry, after the death, in suspicious circumstances, of her fiancé.  That doesn’t keep her from having a sexual relationship with handsome intelligence officer Duncan Shawcross, and making no effort to hide the nature of their relationship.  She is also an excellent horsewoman and wears a special riding habit for riding astride.  Although she often defies the conventions, Petra is very much at home in high society, and has connections to the royal family. read more

Daryl Wood Gerber: Murder by the Millions

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Literary Dining #2

In the second outing of Daryl Wood Gerber’s literary dining series, we find Allie Catt, who runs Feast for the Eyes catering in Asheville, North Carolina, as well as  working at her best friend Tegan Potts’ bookshop. The two of them have taken up throwing literary themed parties at the bookshop as well as solving mysteries. Her cat, Darcy, is always ready to point out a clue or two as well. Business is really taking off and, while Allie is pleased, she is also grateful for the help of her new partner Vanna Harding – Tegan’s half-sister with a rather abrasive personality. Surprisingly, though, the two are getting along rather well, and Vanna isn’t just railroading Allie into all of her own catering ideas. read more

Alex Erickson: Death by Java

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Bookstore Café #14

In the fourteenth outing of Alex Erickson’s Bookstore Café series, protagonist Krissy Hancock has made a comfortable life for herself in Pine Hills, Ohio. She owns and operates a bookstore café called Death by Coffee with her longtime friend Vicki Lawyer. The two of them have worked hard to make their shop a success, as well as a local landmark. Krissy has also picked up a little side hustle of solving crime throughout the town. Local law isn’t exactly thrilled, but they can’t deny that she has been instrumental in solving many murders. However, they can breathe a sigh of relief and get a break from the amateur sleuthing as Krissy is heading back to her hometown of Redwood Village, California, to visit her roots with her father, his girlfriend, and her boyfriend. read more

Kiri Callaghan: The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic and Murder

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Hemlock Saga #1

The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic and Murder is Kiri Callaghan’s first book in the Hemlock Saga series. As promised in the title, there is plenty of magic and murder. There is a disclaimer at the start of the book that also lets readers know that, while this is a cozy mystery, it also has some rather graphic depictions of the bodies that might be a bit more intense than a typical cozy. However, that does not detract from the story at all and seems to motivate the characters even more to find the killer. The world the author depicts has a clear separation of the magical and non-magical world, which makes investigating one in the other rather difficult as the average normal human won’t be able to see or tell if there was some magical hijinks happening around them. The heroines are Avery Hemlock and Saga Trygg. Avery is a changeling who was condemned to five hundred years of nightmares in punishment by the Fey. Saga is a woman trying to find herself again, who is a practitioner of witchcraft like her grandmother and aunt, although Saga sees it as a spirituality and not an actual ability to cast spells. read more

Olivia Blacke: Death at the Door

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Ruby & Cordelia #2

In the first book in this series, A New Lease on Death, Ruby Young had moved to Boston to try and challenge herself and prove that she can make it on her own as a young adult. But things were off to a rocky start, with places to live unaffordable, and jobs all requiring more credentials and experience than she had. Oddly enough, everything suddenly falls into place for her when she found an apartment for rent relatively cheap and fully furnished. The only catch is that the previous tenant, Cordelia Graves, had been found dead and now haunts her former abode. Luckily, Ruby is open to the idea of living with a ghost, after some convincing on Cordelia’s part. They even solve one murder together. These two are complete opposites, but in a way that compliments each other. This allows them to tackle any problem from a variety of angles and come up with a variety of theories. read more

Rosemary Simpson: In Deadly Fashion

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Gilded Age #10

Rosemary Simpson’s two protagonists in her Gilded Age series set in New York city are heiress and lawyer Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton agent Geoffrey Hunter,  partners in an investigative law firm.  Prudence is a member of New York’s elite, known as the Four Hundred, but she has defied society’s conventions and become one of the first female lawyers in the city, even though she is frustrated that she has not yet been allowed to argue a case in court.  Geoffrey is a Southerner who grew up on a plantation, but he left for the North as a young man because of his antislavery views, and decided to build a life for himself in New York.  The two of them have had a slow-burning romance since the beginning of the series.  Geoffrey realized he loved Prudence before she realized she loved him, and once she acknowledged her feelings, she resisted marriage for a long time because she didn’t want to give up her independence.  But now they are finally engaged and, as this book begins, in the late summer of 1891, the wedding date is set for mid-September, just a few weeks away. read more

Louise Penny: The Black Wolf

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Three Pines #20

Louise Penny’s The Black Wolf is a very direct sequel to The Grey Wolf, the previous instalment in Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. Much like its predecessor, The Black Wolf is firmly in the political thriller genre, not usual for most of the series, and dives deep into themes of environmentalism, Canadian and American politics, and the current state of our corner of the world. It is, in other words, incredibly topical and sees Gamache and Penny’s familiar cast embroiled in large scale conflict once again. read more