The historical thrillers by Oliver Clements are set in the early, shaky years of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, where the old religion is not completely dead, and Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin Queen Mary makes mischief from her prison in Scotland. The Agents of the Crown series features the ... [Continue Reading]
Penny & Connelly & Osman
Louise Penny the Madness of Crowds As soon as I finished the seventeenth Chief Inspector Gamache novel, I complained to anyone who would listen! For those of you who missed my rants----The Madness of Crowds is terrible. If you haven’t read the Gamache novels, the earlier ones are wonderful and ... [Continue Reading]
An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch
In 1878, the aristocratic private detective Charles Lenox travels to America on a mission for Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch. Not long after his arrival, a debutant dies under mysterious circumstances, and Lenox is abruptly summoned from New York City to ... [Continue Reading]
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The Thursday Murder Club kept appearing on various “recommended for you” lists, but I initially resisted buying it as it sounded rather insipid, like those mystery novels where the amateur sleuth’s cat is a major character. In Richard Osman’s novel, four residents of a posh British retirement ... [Continue Reading]
Snow by John Banville a/k/a Benjamin Black
About a decade ago, acclaimed Irish novelist John Banville wrote the first in a series of literary crime novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Set in 1950s Dublin, the novels, featuring pathologist Dr. Quirke and his sidekick Detective Hackett, were surprising best sellers. Emboldened by his ... [Continue Reading]
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (a/k/a J.K. Rowling)
Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, but other than the vivid characters and a rather dark perspective, the Galbraith books bear no resemblance to Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Like the previous four novels in the series, Troubled Blood depicts private detective Cormoran Strike and his ... [Continue Reading]
The Last Passenger by Charles Finch
The Last Passenger is the final of three novels that are a prequel to Finch’s Victorian era series featuring upper-class amateur sleuth Charles Lenox. Normally I’m indifferent to prequels, but this trilogy of the early years of Lenox’s fledgling detective career is charming. ... [Continue Reading]
New Novels from Robinson, Kellerman, Francis
In the new Inspector Banks novel by Peter Robinson, Sleeping in the Ground, a wedding goes bloody wrong, literally. Although the perpetrator is caught, Banks thinks there’s more to it. And of course, there is! If you aren’t familiar with Inspector Banks and his colleagues in Yorkshire, get thee to a ... [Continue Reading]
The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes
The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes With Mitford mania in perpetual bloom, it was only a matter of time before some enterprising author wrote a mystery series featuring the Mitford sisters. And not surprisingly that someone is Jessica Fellowes, author of five companion books to the Downton ... [Continue Reading]
Mysteries: Bad, Better, Best
Why do I keep reading Linda Fairstein? I say this every time, yet every time a new Alexander Cooper crime novel is released, I get sucked in. Maybe it is the history buff in me that appreciates the NYC landmarks and historical trivia that Fairstein peppers throughout her stories. But this time, ... [Continue Reading]