Cozy mystery series often have a pleasing formula and the Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery series is no exception. The key elements are murder paired with a missing and/or stolen literary artifact that would interest antiquarians. In A Page Marked for Murder a first edition of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s perennially popular children’s book, The Secret…
It has been ten long years since Swedish novelist Kjell Eriksson wrote about police inspector Ann Lindell. Since retiring from the Uppsala police department, Lindell “is living a quiet life, producing local cheese in a small town in Uppland.” She has not moved far since Uppland is only 30 kilometers from Uppsala, the fourth largest…
Meg Langslow, the eponymous heroine of Donna Andrew’s long-running series, embodies Lucille Ball’s old chestnut, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” Meg runs Caerphilly’s Helping Hands for the Holidays project, a program where neighbors help each other with things they can’t do or can’t afford to have done. With…
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…
