A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

352 pages

Publisher: Orion

Publishing Date: June 27, 2023

NetGalley

 

Blurb

When a wealthy bachelor drops dead at a ball, a young lady takes on the decidedly improper role of detective in this action-packed debut comedy of manners and murder.

Feisty, passionate Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township--she is terrible at needlework, has absolutely no musical ability, and her artwork is so bad it frightens people. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father, and two younger sisters-- beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. If anyone in her etiquette-obsessed community found out, she'd be deemed a morbid creep and banished from respectable society forever.

For her family's sake, she's vowed to put her obsession behind her. Because eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. If not, Martin Grub, their disgusting cousin, will inherit the family's estate, and they will be ruined or, even worse, forced to move to France. So Beatrice must be on her best behavior . . . which is made difficult when a disgraced yet alluring detective inexplicably shows up to the ball.

Beatrice is just holding things together when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet. As a storm rages outside, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear, and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer. Contending with competitive card games, tricky tonics, and Swampshire's infamous squelch holes, Beatrice must rise above decorum and decency to pursue justice and her own desires--before anyone else is murdered.

 

Review

What do you get when you mix Jane Austen and Agatha Christie? Well, that would be a combination of manners and murder, of course. And that is exactly what A Most Agreeable Murder gives us. This book can only be described as a closed-circle-mystery set during the Regency period. Throw in a large helping of humour, and you have a good idea exactly what to expect when you pick up this book.

We have a heroine, Beatrice, who struggles with societal rules and frequently breaks them secretly to satisfy her curiosity about crimes and solving them only to have her dream come true when she’s faced with a real murder in need of investigation. An investigation that will expose not just a murderer but also all the ways in which those around Beatrice may also have been playing hard and fast with the strict rules they’re supposed to be adhering to.

I guess this book may be best described as a romp. While I thoroughly enjoyed the story as such, it all felt a bit forced and over the top at times. The characters are a bit like caricatures, as is the setting of Swampshire, and those societal rules are pushed beyond credulity.

Caper is another word that springs to mind. The author has taken the strict societal rules from the Regency period and pushed them to such an extreme point that I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling every now and again. But, at no point did it interfere with my reading enjoyment. In fact, I flew through this story and found it all but impossible to put it down. Because while the social mores were somewhat ludicrous, the mystery and the road to the eventual solution worked perfectly. The clues were there for those perceptive enough to pick them up, the red herrings were clever and effective, and the denouement pulled everything together very satisfactorily.

Quite a bit of suspension of disbelief is required, though. For example, for a woman who has never been allowed to do just about anything, Beatrice is quite self-sufficient when it comes to defending herself. Bareback horse riding doesn’t seem to be something a Regency period young woman would be proficient at either. 😊

However, caricatures or not, I really like Beatrice and Inspector Vivek Drake and the personal journeys of discovery they make while investigating the murders in Swampshire. And I can honestly say there isn’t a single dull or dead moment in this book.

To summarize: If you enjoy a light-hearted and comical period piece featuring larger-than-life, over-the-top characters combined with a satisfying mystery, and a frantic murder investigation, you’re going to love A Most Agreeable Murder.  Personally, I hope that the sequels the ending leaves room for will materialize. Because, rolling my eyes or not, I couldn’t put this book down.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

325 pages

Publisher: Penguin

Publishing Date: August 2018

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers’ camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men – but Briseis has a very different tale to tell…

 

Review

They say, and this book’s blurb confirms, that history is written by the victors. But it is only a tiny part of the truth I think. Because, in general, it is the men who were victorious who get to tell the tale, and the tales tend to be about those men, too. The women, if they do get mentioned are mostly an afterthought, an aside, irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. The blurb promises us a different perspective – Briseis’s – but is that what we get?

Not according to Briseis herself. Near the end of the book, she says:

Looking back, it seemed to me that I’d been trying to escape not just from the camp, but from Achilles’ story; and I failed. Because, make no mistake, this was his story – his anger, his grief, his story.

In many ways this is still The Song of Achilles (pun intended). Everything that happens to Briseis from the moment the book starts until the very last paragraph is the result of Achilles’ actions, choices, and decisions. What’s more, when we get to the second part of the book, we suddenly get a new, third-person perspective, next to Briseis’ first-person narrative. Achilles who, until that moment, had only been shown through Briseis’ eyes, now gets a voice of his own.

So even in a book called The Silence of the Girls, eventually the one girl who has been given a voice is occasionally silenced. And I’m not sure that it was entirely necessary. Surely the stories of the ancient Greeks and the Trojan War are well enough known that the readers could be trusted to see Achilles only through Briseis’ eyes? Would his despair after Patroclus died have been any less obvious or heart-wrenching if Briseis had described it? Did we need his thoughts and guilt trips to recognise the humanity in this demi-god? I have no way of proving this, but I can’t escape the feeling that our process of feeling (at least) some sympathy for him would have been as powerful (if not more so) if we had seen it through Briseis’ eyes; if we had been part of her very reluctant journey to the point where she sees that Achilles wasn’t all bad – that in many ways he was as much a victim of circumstances and the times he lived and died in as she was.

On the other hand, maybe Archilles’ point of view goes to prove a point – the point being that girl voices were silenced, as the title of the book tells us.

Mind you, especially in the earlier part of the book, there were times when Briseis' words made me sit up and brought tears to my eyes.

A slave isn’t a person who’s being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody elses.

Later on, Briseis adds:

…and a slave will do anything, anything at all, to stop being a thing and become a person again.

A statement made more interesting by the fact that when push comes to shove, Briseis decides against doing the one thing that might have made that transition back possible, be it only for a short while.

Suffice it to say that I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. While I wouldn’t call this an easy read, it was certainly very smooth. The reservations I mentioned above don’t make this any less of a powerful story, beautifully written. It gives the reader a perspective we’re not normally given, and it certainly provoked numerous thoughts and feelings while I was reading and now that I’ve finished the story. If I have to grade this book (and I will be asked to do as much in the book club meeting), I give this book four stars.

And finally, as an aside: I guess the clue is in the name: history. Will we ever get to the time when herstory will receive equal billing?

The Launch Party by Lauren Forry

 

376 pages

Publisher: Zaffre

Publishing Date: June 22, 2023

NetGalley

Blurb

THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME. YOU'D DIE TO BE THERE.

Ten lucky people have won a place at the most exclusive launch event of the century: the grand opening of the Hotel Artemis, the first hotel on the moon. It's an invitation to die for. As their transport departs for its return to Earth and the doors seal shut behind them, the guests take the next leap for mankind.

However, they soon discover that all is not as it seems. The champagne may be flowing, but there is no one to pour it. Room service is available, but there is no one to deliver it. Besides the ten of them, they are completely alone.

When one of the guests is found murdered, fear spreads through the group. But that death is only the beginning. Being three days' journey from home and with no way to contact the outside, can any of the guests survive their stay?

 

Review

A mystery set in the first hotel to open its doors on the moon. When I saw the blurb, I knew I had to read the story. I adore intriguing blurbs almost as much as I love mysteries, so diving into The Launching Party as soon as I could get my hands on it was a no-brainer. And I’m really glad I did.

In many ways—apart from the setting—this is a classic closed-circle murder mystery. We are introduced to a group of ten people who don’t know each other but find themselves in a situation where they have to spend time together in a location they can’t leave. When they discover that they are literally the only people in the vast hotel they are surprised and upset. Their feelings transform into fear when one of them is discovered dead in a scene that was obviously created to disturb and scare. Who can be trusted? Who is hiding what and why? Because even before the murder takes place it is clear that all of them have some sort of issue that may or may not be relevant to what happens next.

I’m not going to list and describe each of the ten guests here. One of them, Penelope Strand, is a police officer and as such automatically falls into the role of trying to find out what happened, although she struggles with some issues of her own.

I loved how the story developed. How the atmosphere changed after the first murder and became even more fraught after a second victim is discovered worked really well. As did the changing loyalties between these people. The mystery captured me early on and held me in its grip right until the final pages.

Having said that, the setup of this story raised one or two questions as well.

For starters, I have to wonder about the logistics involved in getting the people who were at the centre of this mystery all in this location. I’m also not sure the scenario where the group of ten ended up in the hotel on their own, without any staff available, made complete sense. Given the scope of the venture and the amount of money involved, I would expect a stunt like this to be (next to) impossible to pull off.

Do I mind? Did it upset me while I was reading the conclusion?

The short answer is no. While I was reading it didn’t even occur to me that there might be a plausibility issue; that thought only came to me after I finished the book. And even when the thought did cross my mind, it was quickly followed by the realisation that I’d just read a mystery set in the first hotel on the moon and I decided that if I could accept the setting without question, maybe I should show the solution the same generosity. 😊

I feel I should also mention that this story is told from multiple points of view and that it wasn’t always immediately clear when the point of view changed. This may or may not be because I read an ARC rather than the final e-book version, though.

When push comes to shove, what we have here is a closed circle mystery, much in keeping with the genre’s tradition. I’m not sure if the reader is given all the clues they need to solve the mystery before the investigator does, but I wasn’t left with any unanswered question when the story ended. What’s more, I thoroughly enjoyed my reading journey while the investigation was going on. It seems to me that the author allowed for the possibility of more mysteries set in Hotel Artemis and if she writes those, I will definitely read them.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

539 pages

Publisher: Thorpe / Charnwood Large Print

Publishing date: January 2023

Library

Blurb

Open the safe deposit box. Inside you will find research material for a true crime book. You must read the documents, then make a decision. Will you destroy them? Or will you take them to the police?

Everyone knows the story of the Alperton Angels: the cult-like group who were convinced one of their member's babies was the anti-Christ, and they had a divine mission to kill it - until the baby's mother, Holly, came to her senses and called the police. The Angels committed suicide rather than go to prison, and Holly - and the baby - disappeared into the care system.

Nearly two decades later, true-crime author Amanda Bailey is writing a book on the Angels. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen and can finally be interviewed - if Amanda can find them, it will be the true-crime scoop of the year, and will save her flagging career. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby's trail.

As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realise that what everyone thinks they know about the Angels is wrong, and the truth is something much darker and stranger than they'd ever imagined.

This story is far from over - and it won't have a happy ending.

 

Review

WOW!!!!

What a book. What a story. And, what a setup. Unreliable narrator doesn’t begin to cover it. Saying this story is filled with twist after twist would be an understatement. Suffice it to say that whatever I expected the outcome of this story to be—and I changed my mind about that a few times while reading—it wasn’t anywhere close to what I discovered as the tale ended.

As good as this story is, I’ve got a feeling it won’t appeal to everyone. Not because there’s anything wrong with the story—there really, really isn’t—but because of the format in which it is presented. What we have here is a collection of emails, WhatsApp messages, and transcripts of conversations without a single paragraph of narrative, description, or conversation. When I started the story, I did wonder how long it would be before the format would start to irritate me. Now that I’ve reached the end, I’m very happy to say that the concept worked beautifully for me. In a way, it is as if Janice Hallett has turned a mystery plot inside-out. We are presented with all the facts, or rather, with all the information Amanda Bailey is willing to provide us with. This setup turned my reading experience more active; I had to do some of the work you would ‘normally’ expect the fictional investigator to do.

One thing became clear to me very quickly: If you want to make it as an investigative journalist/author, you can’t have too much integrity or worry about other people’s feelings too much. At least, that certainly appears to be Amanda Bailey’s approach. Now that I’ve finished the book, I’m still not sure if I actually liked her.

I don’t want to say anything else about Amanda’s (and Oliver’s) investigation. Suffice it to say that absolutely nothing is as it appears to be at the start and that every time you think you might know what’s going on something unexpected puts you on a different track. The final few pages are filled with shocking twist after shocking twist, and it was absolutely delicious. I can’t wait to read the previous titles by Janice Hallett.

A Death in the Parish by Richard Coles

 

#2 Canon Clement Mystery

432 pages

Publisher: W & N

Publishing date: June 8^th, 2023

 

Blurb

It's been a few months since murder tore apart the community of Champton apart.

As Canon Daniel Clement tries to steady his flock, the parish is joined with Upper and Lower Badsaddle, bringing a new tide of unwanted change.

But church politics soon become the least of Daniel's problems. His mother - headstrong, fearless Audrey - is obviously up to something, something she is determined to keep from him. and she is not the only one.

And then all hell breaks loose when murder returns to Champton in the form of a shocking ritualistic killing...

 

Review

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that a story written by a Reverent and featuring a Canon as the main character might be a cozy mystery. Which just goes to show how dangerous it is to assume anything.

Not to be too mysterious about it, the murder victim in this book is a teenage boy, killed on an altar in what appears to be a ritualistic manner. He is the son of Richard’s new colleague after the parish boundaries have been altered. From the moment they first meet it is clear that Daniel, our Canon, and Chris, the new arrival don’t see eye to eye when it comes to theological matters. Why anybody would want to kill his teenage son though, is a complete mystery.

And then, the mystery appears to take a backseat as the story focuses on other, apparently unrelated (both to the murder and to each other) matters. There’s the (not-suspicious) death of an elderly lady and the question why so many seem to have an interest in her cameo brooch. There’s Daniel’s mother Audrey, and her sudden penchant for secrecy. And of course, there is the usual interaction with the local aristocrats, the de Floures.

There are quite a few moments to make you smile too. Daniel attending a football match with Neil Vanloo, the local detective sergeant, and the uproar Daniel causes. There's an unexpected pregnancy, Or Daniel’s visit to a record store. On the heavier side, the book is also rather heavy on religious thought, theory, and philosophy. Maybe that’s just what a reader should expect from a book written by and featuring a priest. And I have to admit that at least some of it was very relevant to the mystery. But I can’t deny that on one or two occasions my eyes glazed over and my mind wandered.

I was about two-thirds through the book when I figured out both the murder and the motive, well ahead of the conclusion being reached on the page, for a change. That’s not a complaint, though. If nothing else, it means that the murder ‘made sense’ and the author played fair with the reader.

There is quite a bit of action and drama before Daniel sees the light and explains everything in a drawing room scene reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. (Also, not a complaint.) Since the village setting and interactions have Miss Marple vibes, the whole set-up feels a little like a homage to the Queen of Crime.

And then it ends on a surprising and possibly a little disappointing (at least for me, and I assume the character involved) note. I wouldn’t call it a cliff-hanger by any stretch of the imagination, but it does make me curious about book 3.

Long story short: Like Murder before Evensong (Canon Clement #1), A Death in the Parish is a solid mystery featuring a fascinating cast of characters and a satisfying conclusion.

The Isolated Séance by Jeri Westerson

Irregular Detective Mysteries #1

287 pages

Publisher: Severn House

Release Date: June 6^th, 2023

 

Blurb

Watch out, Sherlock! Introducing one-time Baker Street Irregular Timothy Badger and his partner-in-crime Benjamin Watson, two exciting and unconventional young consulting detectives, mentored by the great man himself, tackling intriguing and unusual cases in Victorian London with endearing verve and wit.

Sherlock Holmes's protégés Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson are catapulted into a tricky first case when a man is brutally murdered during a séance.

London, 1895. Former Baker Street Irregular Tim Badger is determined to follow in the footsteps of his great mentor, Sherlock Holmes, by opening his own consulting detective agency with his partner, Benjamin Watson. The intrepid duo are ready to make a name for themselves . . . if only they had clients!

Their luck changes when Sherlock recommends his protégés to Thomas Brent. Brent is eager to find out who killed his master, Horace Quinn, during a séance at Quinn's house. What was Quinn desperately trying to find out from his deceased business partner, Stephen Latimer, before he was stabbed through the heart?

It seems that everyone in Quinn's household had a reason to want him dead. Can Tim and Benjamin step out of Sherlock's shadow to navigate dark secrets and unexpected dangers in their pursuit of a cold-blooded killer?

 

Review

I adore the Sherlock Holmes stories so when I had the opportunity to read a spin-off story featuring former Baker Street Irregular Tim Badger and his friend Benjamin Watson, how could I possibly resist?

Badger and Watson are struggling to get their detection business off the ground. The fact that they are both from the lower classes does not help matters. When they’re approached by Thomas Brent and asked to find proof that Thomas didn’t murder his master Horace Quinn during a séance is an opportunity too good to reject.

Initially, their investigation is riddled with obstacles and even puts Badger in jail. But, not to worry because Holmes comes to the rescue. He gets Badger out of prison and sets the two youngsters up in more respectable quarters and a small budget. Their improved circumstances provide them with a better opportunity to conduct their investigation into what turns out to be a baffling mystery.

As for the actual crime, it is a classic case of a small and closed circle of suspects, none of whom appear to have an obvious motive at first sight. The investigation goes back and forth, the focus shifting as they move along until, eventually, they reach the surprising yet satisfying conclusion.

This story is filled with well-portrayed and interesting characters. Badger and Watson are great fun. Their friendship runs deep, and their interactions are at times laugh-out-loud funny. I loved Watson’s struggle with his improved circumstances and how to conduct himself in this new situation. I appreciate that he is black. It’s not a main thread in the plot but it does, of course, play a role in how he moves around London.

Sherlock Holmes appears in the story enough to maintain his connection with the story and its protagonists while never really imposing himself on the investigation. I love the idea of Holmes as a mentor to two ambitious young men. And enjoyed his appearances on the page whenever they happened.

I had my reservations about Ellsie Littleton, newspaper reporter, but once she stopped being insufferable and thoughtless about what she reported, I warmed to her a little. Having said that, I agree with Benjamin Watson when he has his reservations both about Badger’s infatuation with the young, upper-class woman. I also agree with him that allowing her a role in future investigations may cause issues. Let’s just say the jury is still out when it comes to Ellsie.

To summarise The Isolated Séance is a delightful mystery! Badger and Watson are adorable in their ambition to emulate Sherlock Holmes and his methods of detection and great fun in their interactions with each other and the rest of the world. The actual mystery was baffling enough to keep me on my toes and the solution was both satisfying and fair.