England

Marnie Riches: The Gardener’s Club

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This charming, sweet novel is set in the world of the competitive gardening clubs in the UK.  The main character, Gill Swanley, a widowed single mom, is juggling a burgeoning teen, a horrible job and a difficult and aging mother.  Her job seems especially soul crushing, as she’s in charge of a group of insurance call centers, ordered to cull her workforce by uncovering the slackers.

Riches manages to find humor in this situation, especially in the texts from Gill’s teenaged son (the one where he can’t find the lasagna she left for him to heat up for dinner is a classic).  For respite, she decides to try joining a garden group called the Bromley Botanists. Her first get-together sounds a bit like an AA meeting with everyone sharing their feelings, but the main thrust of the discussion becomes the “Golden Trowel,” a gardening award which the Botanists have never won, something they are determined to change in the coming year. Gill is just beginning to form alliances and friendships with members of the group when she and Marjorie, the Queen Mum of the group, discover a dead body in the community greenhouse and all heck breaks loose. read more

Darcie Wilde: The Heir

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Series debut

I’ve read many books by Darcie Wilde (aka Sarah Zettel), but this may be my favorite.  The writing and pacing are crisp and the character development seems to utilize all the things Wilde must have learned writing her other books.  It’s exquisite.  While this is a pretty familiar story to a history buff, like any good historical novelist, Wilde shines a new light on history, illuminating the facts with her perceptions of the characters in the story.

The main character, Queen Victoria – Princess Victoria at the time of this novel – is living under the “Kensington System,” an elaborate and restrictive set of rules that governed Victoria’s life until she became Queen.  She never had a moment alone, had to sleep in her mother’s room, and every movement and thought she had was determined by her mother and her mother’s aide, Sir John Conroy. The result in both fact and fiction was that Victoria wanted nothing more than to shed the rules imposed on her and to try and evade them. read more

David Lewis: A Beacon in the Night

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Secret Churchill Files #2

London, 1941. As the Blitz winds down the Nazis begin a series of terror-bombings focused on British churches, stately homes, hospitals, and other emotional landmarks in an attempt to destroy cultural heritage and demoralize the British. Can Caitrin Colline, agent of the all-female 512 counterespionage unit track down the source of the beacons that lead the planes to the bomb sites?

Despite Caitrin’s success in saving the Crown Jewels almost single-handedly in the first book in the series, Churchill is threatening to improve his budget by absorbing the 512 into the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Head of the 512, Bethany Goodman, is determined to prove her unit’s usefulness by sending Caitrin to track down the source of the homing beacons. read more

Author Interview: Connie Berry

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I was lucky enough to do interviews for the late, great Mystery Scene, sadly no longer even accessible online.  One of my favorites is this interview with Connie Berry, who writes a binge worthy series set in England.  I’m publishing it here because Connie’s latest book,  A Collection of Lies, is nominated for an Agatha this year.  

Connie’s Kate Hamilton books feature an American antiques dealer who has family ties in England through her British husband.  As the series opens she’s a recent widow visiting her Scottish sister in law, and she meets an English man who will change her life.  He’s a Detective, naturally.  Berry’s books are a wonderful combination of tricky plots, rich characters, and beautiful settings, and for anyone who adores a British village mystery, this is the series for you. Each novel focuses on a story in the past, often highlighting some specific antique element.  In the latest novel, that element is lace making and fabric restoration.  I binged the entire series this summer. read more

Elly Griffiths: The Night Hawks

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Elly Griffiths is playing to her strengths with this (seemingly) effortless, blast to read entry in her Ruth Galloway series.  Ruth is back home where she belongs, having broken it off with the unfortunate Frank, and she and Nelson are once again having fated and tense encounters.  Ruth is now head of the archaeology department at her university, discovering the paperwork and supervision headaches that come with being in charge.  She’s especially annoyed by the “new Ruth”, David, the know-it-all older lecturer she herself has hired.  He seems to be tagging along everywhere she goes and trying to tell her what to do. read more

Erica Ruth Neubauer: Murder at Wedgefield Manor

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Murder at Wedgefield Manor is the delightful second book in Erica Ruth Neubauer’s series set in the 1920s, featuring the adventurous American World War I widow Jane Wunderly.  After solving a mystery in Egypt in the first book, Murder at the Mena House, Jane, her matchmaking Aunt Millie, and Millie’s secret daughter Lillian arrive at Wedgefield Manor, the English country estate of Lord Hughes, who had been Millie’s lover years ago.  Quite possibly, Millie and Hughes are rekindling their romance.  Lillian is the product of their brief affair.  Lord Hughes and his wife had adopted Lillian and raised her as their own, and as far as Jane knows, Lillian is not aware of the fact that Millie is her mother–a fact that Jane had uncovered in the course of her investigation in Egypt, where she met Lillian for the first time. read more