‘Pursuit’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by Head of Zeus,
3 October 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-838-93302-9 (HB)

Why would a seemingly happy young new bride appear to deliberately step out in front of a moving bus?

We learn that when Abby was a child, she had a recurring nightmare of human skeletons laying in the long grass. The night before her wedding she has the same dream again, the first time for years. It appears she has a secret past to hide and is ridden with guilt. She is sure she should not be happily married, is this why she stepped off the kerb?

Abbey is very badly injured, and her new husband Willem stays with her in hospital every moment that he is allowed, also even sleeping in the grounds unobserved. He is determined to get to the truth about what happened, tells her his love will help her through whatever it is.

Slowly as she recovers over the weeks in hospital, she tells him about the nightmares and what happened to her as a child. Something she has never disclosed to anyone, revealing a traumatic experience that has affected her ever since.

She hopes that when she has shared with her loving husband the knowledge of what she went through she will be free of the terrible guilt she still feels. But will she? Will he understand?

A beautifully told moving story of how a person's past can affect the rest of their lives and how guilt can eat away at them. It may be only a relatively short book, but it will leave me with long memories of a child's dilemma.

Recommended for those who enjoy a mystery which slowly and gently unravels itself.

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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

Joyce Carol Oates was born 16 June 1938 Lockport, New York. She published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Book Award. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing, and is the editor of New Jersey Noir.

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.

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‘Edgar Allan Poe and the Empire of the Dead’ by Karen Lee Street

Published by Point Blank,
11 October 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-78607-641-0 (PB)

This is the third in this series featuring the real-life 19^th century American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, as protagonist and Poe’s fictional detective, the French Chevalier August Dupin. 

We go back in time to the death of Poe’s beloved wife Virginia (Sissy) and his deep grief. At this point he is in the United States but when he gets a letter from Dupin asking him to come to Paris for assistance in achieving justice against his ‘nemesis’, Ernest Valdemar who had been responsible for the deaths of Dupin’s grandparents on the scaffold during the French Revolution and for also his parents’ deaths. The letter also suggests that Poe bring documents that he has regarding his own enemy, George Reynolds, and enclosing tickets to cover the cost of the voyage. But when Poe gets to Paris he learns that the letter and tickets were not from Dupin. However, Dupin makes Poe welcome although Poe finds Dupin’s snappish housekeeper, Madame Morel, not easy to get on with. And there is something that Dupin wants to show Poe: how to get into the subterranean passages, relics of ancient mines, beneath Paris, this they do. They find an extraordinary place: endless winding corridors where the walls are lined with human skulls and bones in decorative patterns and boxes of silver and gold and jewellery have been hidden there for decades. 

Dupin has also another activity for Poe to take part in: the Paris police have asked Dupin to assist in the search for a letter stolen from the literary salon of a Madame Legrand. This requires a visit by Dupin and Poe to the next literary meeting of the salon where they meet such literary luminaries as Georges Sand, Baudelaire and Eugene Sue. From there it’s only a step to a tavern, a real thieves’ den called the ‘Lapin Blanc’ run by one Mere Ponisse, an ‘ogress’ (a returned female convict), and Poe and Dupin become enmeshed in a fantastic tangle which includes the disappearance of, first, Madame Legrand, and secondly, Madame Morel. Not to mention the self-styled Grand Duke Berith, a magician and mesmerist – who is he? And a return to the subterranean depths of Paris’s Empire of the Dead.

This is, like the author’s two earlier books (see the Mystery People website for reviews), is extremely clever in the writing and the plotting. With its postmodern ironic playfulness and the intertextual weaving of Poe’s own life and Poe’s fiction, it is a highly intellectual contribution to crime fiction. And a great read as well. Recommended.

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Reviewer: Radmila May

Karen Lee Street was born in Philadelphia, but has lived in London for most of her adult life, and currently resides in Newcastle, Australia. She is the author of Writing and Selling Crime Film Screenplays (2013), short story collection Tattoos and Motorcycles, and Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster (2016), the first in a Poe/ Dupin mystery trilogy. Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru will be published in May 2018. Karen has a PhD in Writing from the University of South Wales and has worked for many years in the European film industry. 

www.karenleestreet.com  

twitter: @karenleestreet 

Radmila May was born in the U.S. but has lived in the U.K. since she was seven apart from seven years in The Hague. She read law at university but did not go into practice. Instead she worked for many years for a firm of law publishers and still does occasional work for them including taking part in a substantial revision and updating of her late husband’s legal practitioners’ work on Criminal Evidence published late 2015. She has also contributed short stories with a distinctly criminal flavour to two of the Oxford Stories anthologies published by Oxpens Press – a third story is to be published shortly in another Oxford Stories anthology – and is now concentrating on her own writing.

‘Downfall’ by Sally Spedding

Published by Death Watch Books,
11 June 2019. 
ISBN: 978-1-07217792-0 (PB)

Delphine Rougier is a twenty-year-old chambermaid working long hours for poor pay at the Hôtel les Palmiers near Le Mans.  She is obsessed with ‘le nouveau DETECTIVE’ magazine but can only fantasise about becoming a police officer and escaping her dreary work and home life.  All this changes one Monday morning when Delphine is making up Room 56 and, to her horror, finds the body of a tiny new-born baby abandoned in the bathroom.  

Captain Serge Valon of the Labradelle gendarmerie and his team are called to investigate the death which is now being treated as murder.  Delphine is interviewed and remembers seeing a man leave Room 45 just before she made her gruesome discovery.  The guest had deliberately avoided walking past her and made his way downstairs via the fire exit.  At the time she had dismissed his behaviour as rudeness, but she now wonders whether there was a more sinister reason for his swift exit from the building.

The hotel, now a scene of crime, is likely to be closed for some time and the loss of income this will entail adds to Delphine’s worries.  However, when she is asked to assist Valon and his assistant, Lieutenant Lise Confrère, with the case she is delighted.  Here is Rougier’s opportunity to prove that she has what it takes to become a real gendarme, an ambition that persists even when she finds out that she is dealing with heartless criminals who are prepared to kill without hesitation.  With family and friends also placed in jeopardy because of her exploits, Delphine gradually realises she does not know who she can trust, a dilemma that could prove fatal.

Downfall is a spine-tingling thriller in which two parallel narratives are skilfully woven together as they move relentlessly towards a tense and unpredictable dénouement.  The action takes place mainly in and around the Pays de la Loire region of France.  The fabulous setting with its medieval and early modern buildings, famous vineyards and the rural countryside of Sarthe may sound divine, but this is a Sally Spedding novel, so expect surprises!  Evil lurks amidst historic châteaux, and the magnificent Loire landscape frequently proves at best inhospitable and sometimes deadly.  The novel is rooted in past acts of brutality and betrayal including World War II, which still looms large in the memories of some of the older characters.  The central plot relates horrors from more recent times; depraved atrocities that started thirty years earlier reach into the present and continue to claim new victims.  Characters are vividly portrayed and are often flawed, compromised and unreliable which adds to the intrigue of the narrative.  No one can be trusted, with the exception of Delphine.  The protagonist’s transformation from discontented chambermaid to courageous sleuth whose strong moral compass compels her to seek for truth and bring criminals to justice, is fascinating as well as entertaining.  If you like your detection dark and moody you will love Downfall – I did! 

This is the first book in which Delphine Rougier appears, the excellent news is that a second book in the series has just been published.  Details of other Sally Spedding novels can be found on her deliciously spooky website.
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Reviewer: Dorothy Marshall-Gent

Sally Spedding was born by the sea near Porthcawl in Wales and trained in sculpture in Manchester and at St Martin's, London. My work was detailed, accurate and in demand, but I began to realise words can deliver so much more than any narrative sculpture or painting. Sally’s first crime mystery, Wringland, has a strong historical thread and is set in the bleak fenland around Sutton Bridge. Cloven also invokes the past while in A Night With No Stars, published in January 2005, it's a fourteen year old murder which destabilises the present. Prey Silence, set in SW France, featuring an animal rights activist, was published in July 2006. Come and be Killed, set in the Malvern Hills, came out in January 2007. Her strong familial connections with the Pyrenees, Germany and Holland have provided her with themes of loss and exclusion. The dark side of people, and landscape. The deceptive exterior, the snake in the grass are all themes which recur in her writing.  

http://www.sallyspedding.com/

 Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction

‘Cold Echo’ by C J Carver

Published by Bloodhound Books,
23 September 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-91298639-2 (PB)
Harry, Lucas and Guy are best friends. Lucas is the eldest and the daredevil of the young group. The book opens with Lucas attempting to light a fire in a barn using a magnifying glass instead of matches. The result of this prank has a tragic outcome which breaks their friendship and the boys all go their separate ways. 

Thirty years later, a man’s head is discovered in the woods, skinned and with the tongue cut out.  Harry is now a successful psychotherapist, and his neighbour and friend DI Theo McCannon asks Harry to assist with the case from a psychological view point, but Harry says it is not his area of expertise and is reluctant to do so, until he learns that the victim is one of his old childhood friends.  Could his friend’s murder be linked to what happened in the past?

When one of Harrys’ clients goes missing he is determined to find him, as he is a vulnerable young boy, but in doing so he is drawn back into the past.  And unbidden, a memory from that fateful day in his childhood, a memory he has suppressed, rises to the surface.

The closer Harry gets to the truth the more secrets emerge and with it the third member of that trio of friends. And soon Harry is in grave danger.

As in all previous books this master storyteller racks up the tension and provides an excellent mystery with many twists and surprises along the way.  Highly Recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Caroline Carver was brought up on a dairy farm. At 18 she headed for the bright lights of London and four years later took a holiday in Australia which turned into a ten-year stay, working for the Sydney arm of several major international publishers. Between jobs, she travelled widely and adventurously: back-packing in South-East Asia on $10 a day for nine months, walking in New Zealand, trekking in Nepal and riding a camel through the Thar Desert are just a few of her travel experiences.
Her first novel Blood Junction won the CWA Debut Dagger and was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best mystery books of the year.

http://www.cjcarver.com 

‘Punish the Guilty’ by Barbara Fagan Speake

Published by Country Books 

ISBN 978-1-910489-72-7 (PB)

Annie McPherson is a Scottish detective who is on an exchange to work on a force in Westport Connecticut.  She is now in her seventh adventure and is so fully embedded in the US police in Connecticut that she now carries a firearm and has become engaged to another police officer Dave Ellison.  She is, however, pulled back to Scotland for a family event at one point during this tale.

Annie and Dave are the lead detectives in two US cases.  The first case is a single murder - a man stabbed, and his body left in an insalubrious alleyway.  A while later, in a second case, another person is murdered this time a woman whose body is found in her bedroom.  Investigations may or may not show a connection.   A friend of Annie and Dave who they met during a previous case, is Ellie Harrington.   She has recently left college and achieved the status of a real job as a junior newspaper reporter and, as a consequence of that she is asked to help as ghost writer of a book investigating a ten-year-old case.    Ellie is living with Detective Tom Kessler who has been seconded to the Westport team.  Her investigation is an interesting one which eventually seems to be connected to an old police case.

The work of a detective unit is beautifully shown with all the detailed interactions of the team and the technical experts.   Revelations gradually lead up to a climax.  This is a well-planned and satisfying story with interesting characters in whose lives the reader feels involved.

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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer 

Barbara has written a series about Annie beginning with Primed by the Past and a stand-alone novel and book of short stories.

Barbara Fagan Speake was born and brought up in Connecticut. She has written 3 crime novels so far.  The first, Secrets Only Sleep, is a standalone mystery.  The second is this book and the third, Programmed to Kill, develops Annie’s adventures in the USA further.  

www.barbarafaganspeake.com   

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.

‘The Devil’s Due’ by Bonnie MacBird

Published by Collins Crime Club,
10 November 2019.  ISBN 978-0-00-819507-6 (HB)

In 1890, in a freezing November! Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson become embroiled in a nasty case entitled The Devil’s Due.  The records were found by this author in a mysterious box from the British Library.  Since the lights of her flat in modern London went out as soon as she opened the particular envelope, she feels the title of the case to be rather ominous.

Dr. Watson decides to move back in with Sherlock Holmes while his wife, the former Mary Morstan, stays with friends in the countryside.  Holmes is already involved in this case searching for the self-styled  ‘Lucifer’.  Holmes acts in his usual peremptory way with Watson faintly pursuing and often putting his foot into delicate matters.   Watson’s medical skills help when he has to deal with Sherlock’s broken wrist after an altercation with the new police Commissioner, Titus Billings.  Not only has Billings forbidden any involvement by Holmes in police cases but a newspaper reporter is busy building up a picture of Holmes as a devilish lying incompetent.

The case concerns mysterious and bizarre deaths of members of the secret club of Luminarians, which Holmes realises are occurring in alphabetical order.  Holmes is really battling against the odds with his brother, Mycroft, as an eminence gris behind Government actions appearing to stand in his way.    There is also a society lady demanding his attention for her problems.   This is a very exciting story fully in the Conan Doyle tradition.

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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer

Bonnie Macbird has published two previous adventures about Holmes and Watson.

Bonnie MacBird was born in San Francisco, educated at Stanford. Bonnie MacBird lives in Los Angeles and London. A fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle since age ten, she's active in the Sherlockian community in both the UK and the US, and speaks regularly on Sherlock Holmes, writing, and creativity. A longtime veteran of Hollywood, MacBird has been a screenwriter (original script for TRON), an Emmy winning producer, a playwright, studio exec (Universal) and actor.  MacBird attributes her enjoyment in capturing "voice" to both her acting and screenwriting experience and her music training as well. She teaches a popular screenwriting class at UCLA Extension, which approaches writing for film using techniques of other art forms.  In her Sherlock Holmes novels, she aims to accurately portray the brilliant detective and his friend as closely as possible to Doyle yet expanding the original short form fiction to full length novels. Art In The Blood features a child who has disappeared, and a bloody art theft and touches on the theme of the perils and blessings of the artistic temperament. Unquiet Spirits features a murdered girl, a threatened scientist, and a haunted whisky estate, while considering the dangers of not dealing with the ghosts of one's past. She is a regular speaker on writing, creativity, and Sherlock Holmes. She lives in Los Angeles.

. http://macbird.com/

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.

‘Tidings of Death at Honeychurch Hall’ by Hannah Dennison

Published by Constable,
14 November 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-4721-2850-8 (PBO)

Kat Stanford ex-presenter of the antiques TV show Fakes and Treasures, now a resident of Little Dipperton in Devon, is relieved to see a huge turnout at Honeychurch Hall for the exhibition of the legendary artefacts she has put together in the museum room in order to raise money for the critical repairs needed to the east wing.   Honeychurch Hall had never before been opened to the public and Lord Rupert Honeychurch the current Earl of Grenville and owner is surprised at the number of people who have flocked to the six-hundred-year-old house. With just 10 days to Christmas Kat’s mother Iris, who lives in the Carriage House on the Honeychurch Hall estate, is dispensing her home-made gin along with the mulled wine, which she insists could be the reason for the high number of attendees.

Rupert had insisted that no security was needed as the situation was safely in the hands of Seth Cropper the butler who was standing as sentinel next to a heavy suit of armour. As the day progressed Kat began to relax – no artefacts had been damaged and the Bleeding Hawk of Honeychurch thought to be over two thousand years old has not disintegrated into a pile of dust.  The hawk was said to ooze a blood-like substance to warn of an impending death, and that anyone touching it would meet with misfortune. As the bird had been sealed in its coffin for more than 150 years there was no verification of this curse.  However, today the lid was off!

With the arrival of Nick Bond reporter for the local newspaper, the Dipperton Deal the photographing got underway. The late arrival of a couple from North Yorkshire, Angus and Lala livened the proceedings a little too much. Fascinated by the talk of the bleeding hawk, Lala declaring she was not superstitious and leaned forward to touch the bird. At which point pandemonium broke out and, in the ensuing melee, the suit of armour fell on the aged butler.

Once the ambulance has taken Seth to hospital and things calmed down, it becomes apparent that Lala and Angus have gone.  Also gone have some valuable objects from the exhibition.  Blame, opinions, jealousies and mysteries ensue.  With the arrival of Detective Inspector Shawn Cropper, it would be hoped some semblance of order will be restored. Unfortunately, Shawn is still attired in his red Santa suit complete with fake white beard, thick busy eyebrows, and so the squabbling continues.

But there are many unanswered questions.  Just who are Lala and Angus? Have the valuable items really been stolen? And, why did Lenny (Major Leonard Evans) currently proposed for a Queen’s Gallantry Medal, take one look at the armour falling, turn ghostly white and back out of the room?

And then a dead body is found…

The characters are marvellous. And the story becomes more intricate and fascinating by the page.  I love a good a mystery and this one has it in spades.  Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Hannah Dennison writes The Vicky Hill Mysteries and the Honeychurch Hall Mysteries (Constable Crime/Little Brown), both set in the wilds of the Devonshire countryside. British born, Hannah has been an obituary reporter, antique dealer, private jet flight attendant and Hollywood story analyst. Hannah has served on numerous judging committees for Mystery Writers of America and is currently serving on the MWA Board. She is a passionate supporter of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the National Trust. She enjoys all country pursuits, movies, theatre and seriously good chocolate. 

www.hannahdennison.com

‘Quick off the Mark' by Susan Moody

Published by Severn House,
1 March 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-84751-760-9 (PB)

 Alex Quick, a former police detective now an art historian is lingering over a cup of tea at the breakfast table and pondering on her single status, and her one or two unsuccessful romantic encounters following the demise of her marriage to Jack the Love Rat, when her reverie is broken by a frenzied banging at her front door.  Opening the door reveals Dimsie Drayton, a drama Queen to the core, who immediately begins sobbing.  Eventually, informing Alex that her brother Tristan is dead having been found in a field - tortured – his knees smashed, and bits cut off his body and castrated.   Alex is dumfounded, Tristan had always appeared the most harmless of men, languid in a particularly English way.  Who would want to harm him, let alone carve the word ‘Cheat’ across his chest?

Reluctantly, Alex agrees to Dimsie’s entreaties try to find the killer of her beloved brother.  Although a long standing friend of the family Alex had only a surface knowledge of Tristan Huber, but as she talks to his business acquaintances, friends and even his family, it becomes clear that people are not too keen to talk about Tristan and that he was not what he appeared to be.  With very little to go on Alex visits the rural area to see the crime scene, only a short walk from the house of Major Horrocks who had found Tristan’s body or rather his dog had.  Major Horrocks is a stereotype of what you would expect for a Major Horrocks, but definitely a sweetie. He explained that Marlowe wasn’t his dog but his neighbour’s Nell Roscoe who went into the hospital and never returned. Despite her enquires Major Horrocks can tell her no more and Alex heads for home. Passing Sam’s bookshop, she decides to call in and unburden.  To cheer her up Sam suggests a drink with his neighbour Edward.  But while enjoying a glass of wine Edward takes a call informing him of the murder of his friend Kevin Fuller.

As the body count rises Alex is no further forward, but as she continues to investigate several things seem to her a little off. Like the affable con-man about whom she knows nothing but accidentally runs into in a different situation which sparks her interest.   And still conscious of her need to meet people she joins the drama group, but all may not be what it seems even here.

This is a true mystery, surrounded by well-fleshed out characters you want to know all about and would so like to meet.  I own to being completely baffled right to the end.  And if you want a murder mystery, then look no further this one will keep you on your toes. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Susan Moody was born in Oxford is the principal nom de plume of Susan Elizabeth Donaldson, née Horwood, a British novelist best known for her suspense novels. Susan Moody began writing crime novels with Penny Black, the first of the seven Penny Wanawake crime novels.  She has a second series of six books featuring bridge player Cassie Swan. In all, she has published 29 novels, most of them crime and suspense. Susan spent two years as a Creative Writing Tutor in Her Majesty's Prison, Bedford. She is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association, serving in all as a CWA Committee member for seven years. She is a long-standing member of the prestigious Detection Club and served for three years as the President of the International Association of Crime Writers.  In 2016 Susan Moody began a new series featuring Alex Quick. Click the title to read a review of the first book in her Alex Quick series. Quick and the Dead 

http://susanmoody.co.uk

‘Missing Person’ by Sarah Lotz

Published by Hodder & Stoughton,
5 September 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-473-62462-7 (HB)

Shaun lives in Northern Ireland with his dog Daphne. He leads a quiet life living in the flat above the bookshop where he works.  He had always been led to believe that his uncle Teddy had been killed when he was young many years ago. Howeverr, a doubt arises in his mind when he has a visit from Johnny an old acquaintance of his uncle's. He is adamant that he was not killed but because he was gay the family rid themselves of him by paying his fare to New York. He was told never to come back and he didn't. 

Shaun decides to try and find out the truth for himself. He learns of a group of people in America called Missing-linc.com, made up of amateur sleuths, people trying to give a name to unidentified bodies. They all have avatars, so no one knows of the others identities.

Shaun gets in touch with them and sends a photo of Teddy. One of the group thinks he looks like an unidentified body known as “The Boy in a Dress” discovered in 1996.

The rest of Shaun's family are not happy about him trying to find the truth and when he has a telephone call supposedly from Teddy telling him not to look for him, he really is puzzled and not sure what to think. Could it be one of the family trying to put him off?

When he is told that Teddy abused a ten-year-old, he decides that he really must get to the bottom of Teddy's disappearance and he flies to America. One of the group who lives near where the body was found invites him to come and stay.

Meanwhile it is slowly disclosed to the reader that the murderer of “The Boy in a Dress” is also a member of the group and loves to manipulate them. Is the body really that of Teddy and was he a pervert as the family maintained? Shaun needs all the help he can get to find the truth but will he find it?

A very unusual and cleverly written story. A really intriguingly good read. It demonstartes the lengths some families will go to, to cover up the supposed seedy actions of one of their members.  It was also interesting to see inside the devious and clever mind of a murderer. Highly recommended. 

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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

Sarah Lotz is a screenwriter and novelist with a fondness for the macabre and fake names. Incapable of holding down a 'proper' job, over the years she's painted outrageous frescos for dubious casinos, written scripts for South Africa's first full-length sci-fi cartoon show and lived homeless on the streets of Paris as a teenage runaway. Among other things, she writes horror/thriller novels under the name S.L. Grey with author Louis Greenberg, a YA pulp-fiction zombie series with her daughter, Savannah, under the pseudonym Lily Herne, and quirky erotica novels with authors Helen Moffett and Paige Nick under the name Helena S. Paige. Stephen King said her solo novel The Three was 'really wonderful' (which made her cry in a very good way. She likes cake, scruffy dogs, fast cars and sitting in her attic making stuff up.

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.

‘Paint a Murder’ by Lily Ashton

Published by Magenta Lily Publishing,
29 July 2019.  
ISBN 978-1-9161062-0-8 (PB)

Alice Haydon is working at the Gregory House Art Gallery, in a small riverside town.  On her way to work she sees the police removing a body from the river.  Shocked, she gets to work only for another shock, that the Senior Curator, Jenna, has broken her leg, giving Alice the opportunity to take charge of the forthcoming exhibition, celebrating the Gallery’s 100th birthday.  Part of her role is to assemble the pieces that will comprise the exhibition, including one from the District Council collection.  But when the painting arrives, it is not the one promised.  Her attempts to sort this out and the problems she encounters when another painting is stolen from the Gallery lead her along a mysterious and ultimately dangerous trail.  She annoys her boss, argues with her boyfriend, and has to cope with the unexpected appearance of a previous boyfriend, now a Detective Inspector.  But she is determined to solve the mysteries of the dead man and the missing artworks.  Could they be in any way connected?

The art world has great potential for criminal activity (as does the average small town) and this plot develops that potential neatly, with twists and turns that hold the interest and provide continual surprises.  Alice is a strong new character, determined, intelligent, and committed.  It will be interesting to follow the progress of this crime-fighting curator.
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Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood
The second book in the series, Sculpt a Murder, will be published shortly.

Lily Ashton says that her Alice Heydon mysteries are inspired by lifer around her writing hut on the river. In ​her spare time, she likes to nose around art exhibitions and craft markets.

https://www.lilyashton.com

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.