‘Deadly Dancing at the Seaview Hotel’ by Glenda Young

Published by Headline,
11 September 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-4722-8572-0 (HB)

It’s autumn, which to many people means the new series of Strictly Come Dancing – so Glenda Young’s latest cosy mystery set in a Scarborough hotel is timely. It features a troupe of ballroom dancers who move in to Helen Dexter’s Seaview Hotel while they rehearse and perform a dance show at the town’s iconic Spa.

Fans of this entertaining series will recognize the regular characters: Helen herself, who is blessed, or possibly cursed, with a keen curiosity about her clients; Jimmy her Elvis impersonator boyfriend; Jean the hotel’s award-winning cook, who is unexpectedly vulnerable this time around following the death of her beloved mother; Sally the cleaner, now pregnant with twins, and her entrepreneur husband Gav; Marie, Helen’s elegant friend; and of course Suki the greyhound, recipient of confidences.

The dancers are glossy and glamorous, but under the shiny surface lurks a darker reality. Monty is startlingly handsome, and knows it. His wife Carla is bitter after an accident in Blackpool ended her dancing career. Rosa is too ambitious for her own comfort. Bev the company manager has an acid tongue. Podcaster Paul seems to be a stranger to personal hygiene. In fact, the only one Helen takes to is Tommy, who doesn’t really want to be a dancer at all. And skulking on the sidelines are the Tanners, Frankie and Bobby, father and son. They’re very bad news indeed, but Jean won’t have a word said against them, especially Frankie.

And then there’s a murder, at the opening of Gav’s latest enterprise, a tanning salon. The victim is one of the dancers, and not for the first time, Helen, Jean, Sally and Gav find themselves entangled in the investigation.  

Over the next few days all kinds of questions float to the surface. Is the murderer one of the hotel guests? Who tampered with the equipment in Gav’s salon? Can anyone persuade Jean that the charming but unscrupulous Frankie Tanner is bad news? Why is Bev constantly on her phone? Is Monty to be trusted? What really happened in Blackpool? And most important of all, will Helen agree to go on holiday to Graceland with Jimmy?

This is crime fiction, so naturally all will become clear – but before it does, there’s a labyrinth of bribery, extortion and fraud to be negotiated, not to mention a murderer to track down. Strictly this is not – but fans of cosy mysteries will have great fun unravelling all the knots.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Glenda Young credits her local library in the village of Ryhope, where she grew up, for giving her a love of books. She still lives close by in Sunderland and often gets her ideas for her stories on long bike rides along the coast. A life-long fan of Coronation Street, she runs two hugely popular fan websites.

http://www.glendayoungbooks.com  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.