Cornwall

Freya Sampson: The Busybody Book Club

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I loved this book and its Cornwall setting. It begins with the heroine, former Londoner Nova, fretting that no one will show up for the book club she runs at the local Community Center.  Luckily a few people do straggle in, led by the overwhelming Phyllis, who is so entirely bossy that she’s allowed to bring her smelly dog with her wherever she goes. She’s joined by the affable, older Art, who reads romances to his now blind wife who loves them, a painfully shy teen, Ash, and a man named Michael who seems to have come from afar to join the club but seems to have read little of the book they’re discussing. read more

G.M. Malliet: Death in Cornwall

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I was (am) a giant fan of Malliet’s Max Tudor series.  I had always been aware of the St. Just series, but had never read one, and I am now a giant fan of this series as well.  There are really very few practitioners of the traditional British detective novel working at the moment, and Malliet is one of the best.  Her novels are very much golden age in pattern, with a series detective, a fast paced and tidy narrative, and in this case, a setting to die for – the Cornish coast.

Using a trope beloved of novelists from Agatha Christie to Deborah Crombie to Louise Penny, St. Just is on vacation with his fiancée (the wittily named Portia De’Ath – I hope she keeps her maiden name!) Like Crombie’s Duncan and Penny’s Gamache, St. Just seems to be the calm center of the storm.  It made it completely believable that the local constabulary would turn to him for advice. read more

Rhys Bowen: The Last Mrs. Summers

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Every year, for many years now, I’ve set aside a day.  If I’m lucky, and there are no distractions, it’s a whole delicious day devoted to Rhys Bowen.  This year that day came August 4, when I cracked open the new Lady Georgie mystery, The Last Mrs. Summers, Rhys Bowen’s take on the classic Rebecca.

Georgie is a newlywed with her own house to run – Queenie making scones in the kitchen and starting (hardly any) fires – and life with Darcy to enjoy.  Unfortunately, in the first chapter Darcy is off on assignment and when the lonely Georgie goes up to town her friends and even her grandfather are all busy.  Dejected, she heads back home, only to run into her buddy Belinda, who has just inherited a place in Cornwall.  She and Georgie decide to head to Cornwall to check it out together in quick order. read more