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]
Vertigo 42 by Martha Grimes
Vertigo 42 by Martha Grimes The four-legged members of Melrose Plant’s (a/k/a Lord Ardry and Superintendent Richard Jury’s civilian sidekick) household include a horse named Aggrieved, a goat named Aghast, and a stray dog named Aggro (a/k/a Joey.) The fact that all Plant’s pets have ... [Continue Reading]
A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
A Spy Among Friends, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre I’m a big fan of the non-fiction works of Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat and Double Cross, and his latest, A Spy Among Friends, doesn’t disappoint. Ken Philby was one of the infamous Cambridge Five, a group of young ... [Continue Reading]
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith a/k/a J.K. Rowling
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith a/k/a J.K. Rowling Yeah! Private investigator Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott are back—as I knew they would be. Galbraith’s first novel was clearly poised as the first in a series of novels in the time honored literary tradition of sleuth and ... [Continue Reading]