aunt_agatha

Kathleen Marple Kalb: The Stuff of Murder

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Old Stuff #1

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Kathleen Kalb’s.  The fact that her maiden name was actually Marple might be reason enough to love her, but she’s also an incredibly adept and enjoyable cozy writer.  She kicked off her career with an historical fiction series featuring an opera singer, but she’s written various cozies, one based on her actual profession (radio host), one featuring a secret hit woman, and this latest one featuring historical society head and antiques expert Christian Shaw. read more

Celeste Connally: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord

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Lady Petra Inquires #1

Joining the now crowded regency mystery field, Celeste Connally manages to make her entry a stand out in her series debut.  Set in 1815, Lady Petra Forsyth has declared to all of society that she plans to remain unmarried.  Unusually for the time, she has her own monies left to her by her mother, and she’s mourning not only a dead fiancé but the loss of her dearest childhood friend, Duncan Shawcross.  The two were raised together and parted on a terrible note after the death of Petra’s beloved, who was also Duncan’s best friend. read more

Amanda Flower: I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

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Emily Dickinson #2

I hardly ever think the second book in a series is better than the first, but in this case, I do.  Amanda Flower introduced Emily Dickinson as a detective in the first audacious book. She detects with her maid, Willa Noble.  While the first book was mostly about Willa and her family, this one is more a melding of the two women’s lives, centering on a visit by Ralph Waldo Emerson to the home of Emily’s brother, Austin, and his new wife, Susan.

As the story opens Austin and Susan have just returned from their honeymoon, and Emily insists that Willa help them out for the week, preparing the house for Emerson’s arrival.  She blithely insists Willa can do her work at her house when she’s finished for the day at Austin’s.  One feature of this book, a bit more than the first, is Emily’s lack of awareness of the different life of a servant, and the constraints under which they function.  She’s constantly putting Willa into situations where no other maid would find herself and where Willa is supremely uncomfortable. This friction, mostly undiscerned by Emily herself, adds depth to the story. read more

Val McDermid: Past Lying

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Karen Pirie #7

This is the series I think of as Val McDermid’s “gentler” series.  Unlike the gruesomeness of the Tony Hill books, these books are more cerebral.  Cerebral in an un-putdownable way. Karen Pirie heads up Edinburgh’s cold case squad – called in Scotland the HCU or Historical Cases Unit.  At the close of the last book, Karen and her squad mate, Daisy, had agreed to go into lockdown together as COVID was just taking its hold on the world.  At that moment, it seemed like lockdown would be a few short weeks, but as this novel opens COVID is in full swing. read more

Rhys Bowen: The Proof of the Pudding

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Royal Spyness #17

The fun factor in this series never diminishes.  In this outing, Lady Georgie is awaiting the arrival of her baby.  She’s settled in her godfather’s house, and her big issue is finding a chef.  At the moment, her longtime employee Queenie is running the kitchen, but she’s not a trained chef and Georgie has found a candidate in Paris who is about to appear.  Queenie is in a classic huff, saying she won’t take orders from foreigners, when the dashing Pierre appears at the front door and all Queenie’s objections disappear. read more

Stephen Mack Jones: Deus X

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August Snow #4

Stephen Mack Jones, creator of August Snow – Detroit’s Mexican-African American knight in shining armor – wants to ponder, in his fourth novel, the cost of doing what’s morally right, no matter what.  As the book opens, August is visiting his girlfriend’s family in Sweden but while there, he seems to have tracked down and caught a serial killer.  That’s just the first chapter.  He gets an urgent call from his sometime housemate, Lucy Three Rivers, that her adoptive mothers are in crisis.  One of them is in the hospital with a heart problem. read more

Ausma Zehanat Khan: Blood Betrayal

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Detective Inaya Rahman #2

The second novel in Ausma Khan’s Detective Inaya Rahman series is as powerful and moving as the first, Blackwater Falls.  I think police novels are at a tough point at the moment because of recent, tragic events involving police violence. Khan looks at policing from a different angle, approaching her novel from the point of view of a Muslim detective who works for Denver’s CRU, or Community Response Unit. The CRU takes on cases that are racially sensitive, and in both this novel and the first, the action is centered in Blackwater Falls, an idlyllic (seeming) town just outside of Denver. read more

Vanessa Lillie: Blood Sisters

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I had a love-hate relationship with this read.  Love: I loved the characters, the set-up, the cultural background, and the rocket powered story.  Hate: I hated the way the main character runs into danger, alone, even though she knows it’s stupid.  The 4th or 5th time she did it I almost closed the cover, but I am so glad I didn’t because this read is powerful, moving, and difficult to forget.

The main character is Syd Walker, a Cherokee from Oklahoma who has made a life for herself far from home.  She’s an archeologist, married to a dentist, and the two women are trying for a baby, though Syd doesn’t seem to be totally on board with the baby idea.  As the book opens, Syd is examining the bones of a woman found on Native land in Rhode Island. As she’s on her way home from the site, she gets a call from her boss. read more

Dana Mentink: Spoon to be Dead

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Shake Shop #3

Dana Mentink’s Shake Shop series is joined by her latest addition: Spoon to be Dead. Trinidad Jones, owner of the Shimmy and Shake ice-cream shop, is facing every ice-cream shop’s biggest obstacle: winter. It’s hard to tempt people with an icy treat in the middle of a blizzard, no matter how tasty. While her business partner Juliette has a much more optimistic attitude, Trinidad fears the failure of her shop might be just around the corner. Given that she came to Sprocket, Oregon to set up a new and better life for herself and her Papa, she is finding the risk of closing almost unbearable. Luckily, she comes up with some less frosty options to try and float her business through the cold, including catering deserts at an event on a local steamboat. While worried, Trinidad is more than ready to face the challenges. With her Papa, her newfound boyfriend Quinn, found sisters (and fellow ex-wives of one Gabe Bigley) Juliet and Bonnie, she has enough confidence to come up with plenty of shop-saving ideas – then the unthinkable happens. The notorious ex-husband Gabe Bigley walks right into their shop and back into all their lives. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he confesses to having possibly killed someone before he passes out and letting the ladies take over. read more

Maya Corrigan: A Parfait Crime

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Five-Ingredient #9

Two murders combine in Maya Corrigan’s ninth installment of her Five-Ingredient series,  A Parfait Crime. Val Deniston first gets drawn into this mystery when her boyfriend, firefighter Bram Muir, comes to her house for dinner. He’s distraught at finding not only a fire, but that the fire resulted in the death of a woman named Jane. Jane also happened to be a part of a play of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, along with Val’s grandfather. Val’s grandfather was also a member of Jane’s Agatha Christie book club and  has an in to the group, which helps Val learn more about the victim. Or victims, rather, as one more body is found in Jane’s basement. This poor victim is long dead and locked in a freezer. Needless to say, there are many questions and not nearly enough answers. read more