Murder at Queen’s Landing marks a sea-change for the series. Much has changed since readers first met the Earl of Wrexford and Charlotte Sloane. Charlotte’s secretive livelihood is no longer front and center, as it was in the first three mysteries. Charlotte Sloane’s secret persona as the “controversial satirical cartoonist A.J. Quill” is known to…
If you enjoy Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in all its incarnations, you’ll want to read the 3rd in Heather Redmond’s Dickens of a Crime Series. Charles Dickens and his fiancée, Kate Hogarth, go caroling to raise money for a charity that is near to their hearts, Charity for Dressing the Mudlark Children of Blackfriars Bridge. Just…
Roarke’s mysterious past is the heart of Shadows in Death. J.D. Robb alludes to this in her description of her 51st In Death book. While Roarke is Eve’s center, in Shadows in Death he’s at the center of her case as well. When the murder of a woman in Washington Square Park interrupts a…
Just before Christmas, Vera finds a young boy, strapped in his car seat, in an abandoned car close to Brockburn, her family’s ancestral estate. Vera’s complicated family history—her father Hector grew up at Brockburn—plays into the narrative. She well remembers strained visits to Brockburn with her father. That branch of the clan used politeness as…
Investigative reporters are akin to ambulance-chasing lawyers, their ear next to the ground so they don’t miss any breaking stories. In an era where jobs in journalism are precarious, there’s an urgency to be the one, on the regular, who ferrets out what police would prefer to stay hidden. Austin, Texas based reporter Bailey Rhoads…
It’s the first day of Gwen Franklin’s new life. Goodbye career as a high-school English teacher, hello early retirement. She has plans that don’t include being woken up by Nora Goldstein, her best friend from kindergarten and her sister-from-another-mother. “What do you want?” I sounded as surly as I felt. I’d been looking forward to…
The glamorous, water-side headquarters of the Morris and Wood advertising agency in Lymington burnt to the ground. Lymington is on the west side of the Lymington River in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. Who is responsible? Did anyone die? Heidi Perks distances readers from the smoldering embers by leading with fire investigators questioning…
A popular trope in cozy mysteries is “Let’s put on a show.” The spring community theater production of The Wizard of Oz is, surprisingly, Britton Bay’s inaugural play. All the parts are being filled by local thespians, but the out-of-town director’s reputation precedes her. It turns out former soap opera actress Magnolia Sweet is anything…
Lady Georgiana Rannoch’s friends and relatives know Georgie as the soul of loyalty and discretion and an absolute brick if you’re in trouble. Just ask Queen Mary or Belinda Warburton-Stoke, Georgie’s best friend from Swiss boarding school. Now blissfully married to the Honorable Darcy O’Mara, a Roman Catholic, Georgie, aka Mrs. O’Mara, is no longer…
The Below Stairs mystery series does not take place solely downstairs, the milieu of talented cook Mrs. Kat Holloway. She’s called missus out of respect for her position, which is on par with the butler and housekeeper. Scandal Above Stairs, the second Below Stairs mystery, called upon Kat and her enigmatic friend Daniel McAdam, to…
