Robin Agnew

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

Carlene O’Connor: Some of Us Are Looking

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County Kerry #2

The follow up to O’Connor’s County Kerry series debut, No Strangers Here, avoids any tinge of sophomore slump. Her thoughtful, well plotted, richly charactered series is set in tiny Dingle, Ireland.  The series heroine, Dimpna Wilde, is a vet whose work insinuates itself into the plots in the best possible way.  Not only does her work temper some of the gruesomeness O’Connor writes about, it also grounds Dimpna in the community.  As the book opens she’s been called to the scene of a hit and run – there’s a baby fox trapped under the body, and the mother fox is giving all the emergency workers on the scene a death stare. read more

Paula Munier: Home at Night

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Mercy & Elvis #5

This is a great Halloween read.  You’d think mystery fiction would be more littered with great Halloween reads, but there really aren’t that many.  Munier also has a theme, as she always does, and the theme of this novel is “home,” the meaning of it and the finding of it. Her series centers on Mercy Carr, a veteran of the Afghan war, as is her dog, Elvis. The story opens with a young Mercy Carr encountering a ghost like figure at an old, abandoned house in town.  The woman who had owned it was a well known poet, and one of her more famous poems is a Halloween verse for children. read more

S.K.Golden: The Socialites Guide to Death & Dating

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Pinnacle Hotel #2

This charming series follows Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy in 1958 New York City.  Her father owns the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, where Evelyn lives, and he makes only occasional appearances in her life.  As the book opens, she and her boyfriend, Mac, are at a party she’s planned at the hotel.  It’s full of wealthy, prominent people, but as it’s wrapping up, Mac suggests they make a break for it and head to his place in Yonkers.  Evelyn, who is agoraphobic (but she’s working on it) reluctantly agrees to this plan.  Unfortunately, on their way out of the hotel garage, they find one of the guests, a Judge Baker, dead in his car of an apparent heroin overdose. read more

Danielle Arceneaux: Glory Be

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Glory Broussard #1

Great books are like a song.  They have a melody and a rhythm all their own, and envelop you in their reality.  Danielle Arceneaux’s debut novel, Glory Be, might be Patti LaBelle’s You Are My Friend. Glory, the heroine of the novel, is an older, heavier black woman living in LaFayette, Louisiana.  She’s a divorcee and fills her time with church, the local Red Hat Society, and heading to the coffee shop Sunday afternoons to run her business – she’s a bookie.  Her life is in chaos, and it’s not made any better when her best friend, Amity, is found dead, an apparent suicide.  Like many a mystery heroine before her, Glory is certain Amity’s death is not a suicide, and begins trying to prove it. read more

SJ Bennett: Murder Most Royal

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Her Majesty the Queen Investigates #3

I love this series.  When I tell people about it, that the books have Queen Elizabeth II as the detective, there are many skeptical raised eyebrows.  The wonder of the books: the plots are wonderful; there’s diversity in the characters – the Queen’s foil is her aide, Rozie, a London born Nigerian – and the respect for the Queen, by all accounts a practical and dutiful woman, shines on every page in the nicest possible way.  The books allow you to imagine that it might have gone this way if the Queen really was a secret detective, guiding the police and Scotland Yard to solutions she’s already figured out, with Rozie’s help.  There’s also a shining thread of feminism underneath all the stories, celebrating women’s strength in the many forms that strength takes. read more