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]
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
A Rising Man is the first in a historical crime series which takes place in Calcutta, 1919. Captain Sam Wyndham, newly arrived from Scotland Yard, and his Indian colleague, Sergeant “Surrender-Not” Banerjee, one of the few Indians to be recruited into the new CID, must solve the high-profile murder ... [Continue Reading]
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz Magpie Murders is a classic whodunit by the television screenwriter who created PBS favorites, Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. Susan Ryeland is an editor at Cloverleaf Books. Her number one writer is Alan Conway, the author of the wildly successful Atticus ... [Continue Reading]
Mystery Medley
Mystery Medley Home by Harlan Coben Home is the eleventh novel in Coben’s fast-paced series featuring the amiable former college basketball player Myron Bolitar and his sinister sometime sidekick Win. As Home opens, the partners receive a tip that one of two boys kidnapped ten years ago and ... [Continue Reading]
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan A sub genre of the English cozy is the Indian cozy, light hearted detective tales set in the subcontinent. Other than references to the terrible traffic and the appearance of the occasional beggar, the stresses of modern Indian life are ... [Continue Reading]
The Strangler Vine by M. J. Carter
The Strangler Vine and The Infidel Stain by M.J. Carter In the tradition of Holmes and Watson, Jeremiah Blake, a cynical ex-employee of the British East India Company and William Avery, a young soldier, are the sleuths in M. J. Carter’s series of Victorian mysteries. The first novel, The ... [Continue Reading]
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom My cousin Harriet introduced me to the Matthew Shardlake Tudor mysteries. If you liked Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, you’ll enjoy these as well. Unlike many Tudor stories which concentrate on the dramatic Anne Boleyn years, author C.J. Sansom begins his ... [Continue Reading]
Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch
Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch With the impenetrable fog and stifling conventions, Victorian London is an irresistible setting for murder mysteries, and the Charles Lenox series by Charles Finch is an especially good one. In Finch’s ninth novel, Lenox’s fledgling detective agency is on the ... [Continue Reading]
The Long Way Home by Louise Penny
The Long Way Home by Louise Penny Despite her gothic prose, the new Louise Penny is reliably gratifying. (I have forgiven Penny for her transgressions in The Beautiful Mystery.) In The Long Way Home, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec retires to the tiny village of Three ... [Continue Reading]