{"id":3163,"date":"2019-05-20T16:55:37","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T23:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3163"},"modified":"2019-05-20T16:55:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T23:55:37","slug":"fay-sampson-the-wounded-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/fay-sampson-the-wounded-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Fay Sampson: The Wounded Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A mystery doesn\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel to be enjoyable \u2013 that\u2019s certainly proven by the scores of cozy mysteries published each month. Another formula beloved by readers (and viewers of Acorn TV and similar networks) is the British village mystery, a slightly rarer commodity. Much of contemporary British crime writing is of the extremely dark variety. And while I\u2019m certainly a fan of writers like Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Stuart MacBride, sometimes I yearn for something a little more in the Marple and Poirot mode.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a long way of saying that Fay Sampson\u2019s The Wounded Snake<\/em> fits nicely into the Marple mode, complete with an older, nosy female detective, the purposeful and capable Hilary. and her buddy, the recently widowed Veronica. The two women are enrolled in a crime writing course at historic, 14th century Morland Abbey, featuring a well known crime writer as the keynote speaker.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the crime writer is whisked away to the hospital in the middle of the night \u2013 she\u2019s in her 90\u2019s, but it doesn\u2019t stop the crime writing hopefuls from speculating that it may have actually been a poisoning, and when detectives start nosing around, they are sure of it, with theories flying everywhere.<\/p>\n

Undeterred by the author\u2019s illness (she\u2019s not dead, after all) the fledgling writers head out to investigate the town in hopes of finding a perfect setting for their novels. Hilary finds a shivery confluence of three wells, ending in a secluded alleyway in the middle of the ancient city of Totnes. She happily writes there the first day but when she and her friend Veronica return, they unfortunately stumble across a dead body.<\/p>\n

This novel has a perfect assortment of characters – there\u2019s even a retired colonel \u2013 and Sampson skillfully creates a valid pool of suspects, a clever mystery, an evocative setting and a completely and utterly pleasant and engaging read. There\u2019s nothing too upsetting involved (though the discovery of the body is fairly graphic, and Hilary is believably disturbed by her finding), and the solution has a nice mix of ingenuity and humanity. If you\u2019re a fan of the British village mystery, this is not to be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A mystery doesn\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel to be enjoyable \u2013 that\u2019s certainly proven by the scores of cozy mysteries published each month. Another formula beloved by readers (and viewers of Acorn TV and similar networks) is the British village mystery, a slightly rarer commodity. Much of contemporary British crime writing is of the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-3163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british-village","tag-crime-writing-conference","tag-miss-marple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3165,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3163\/revisions\/3165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}