Tag: Cozy Mysteries

To Fetch a Felon by Jennifer Hawkins

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December 28, 2020

2:03 pm

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A small reddish Corgi dog sniffing at the ground under a black table. Table is set with a white teapot. A black chair is overturned in front of the dog.

To Fetch a Felon by Jennifer Hawkins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Synopsis:

Emma Reed left her finance career in London to open a tea shop in a lovely Cornish village. Things get off to a bad start when her Corgi, Oliver, races into a neighbor’s garden. A neighbor who really loves her garden and really doesn’t like dogs. And who happens to own the building Emma is hoping to rent for her tea shop.

When Emma tries to patch things up with a friendly visit and some fresh-baked scones, she finds her grumpy neighbor dead, the victim of what Oliver says is some very wrong-smelling tea.

Oh, yes, Oliver talks. Only to Emma, though, which makes for some awkward moments around other people.

Emma and Oliver set out to find the murderer and uncover some long-held village secrets along the way.

My Thoughts:

Sometimes, what you need is a good old-fashioned cozy mystery, complete with idyllic small-town setting, an amateur sleuth, and a talking animal.

Just me?

It was definitely what I needed, and this book delivered. Oliver, the noble warrior Corgi, and Emma are absolutely charming. The murder victim is the classic cozy victim: someone who, when you ask, “Who would kill this person?”, the answer is along the lines of, “Almost anyone who ever met them, maybe?” Except, of course, the person is more complicated than that.

This is just the start of a new series, and I’m already looking forward to future sleuthing with Emma and Oliver.

Source:

E-ARC from NetGalley – thank you to Berkley Publishing Group for making it available!

Challenges:

Reading Women #22: A Book by Either a Favorite or a New-to-You Publisher

View all my reviews

Getting Old is Murder by Rita Lakin

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May 31, 2018

7:00 am

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Getting Old Is Murder (Gladdy Gold, #1)Getting Old Is Murder by Rita Lakin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hello. Let me introduce myself. I’m Gladdy Gold. Actually, Gladys. I’m a self-proclaimed P.I. That’s right, a private eye. Operating out of Fort Lauderdale.

When did I get into the P.I. biz? As we speak. My credentials? More than thirty years of reading mysteries. Miss Marple and Miss Silver are my heroines.

At age 75, retired librarian Gladys “Gladdy” Gold lives in Lanai Gardens, a Florida “retirement community” condo development. With her circle of friendly neighbors (including her younger sister), she enjoys a regular routine of walking, sitting by the pool, Publix shopping trips, canasta games, and other everyday activities. Lanai Gardens is a community unto itself, with everyone into one another’s business, so Gladdy fills the reader in on the goings-on in everyone’s life. Life that seems pretty predictable until ladies start dying right before their birthdays, and Gladdy quickly begins to suspect foul play.

This is a quick-moving book, with short chapters and snappy observations. It’s easy to hear Gladdy’s New York twang in her short sentences and wry humor. She is the gossipy great-aunt you didn’t know you had, but she is ready to sweep you up into her world and make you at home. Interspersed with the first-person chapters narrated by Gladdy, there are a few chapters that take a third-person perspective to reveal events that she doesn’t yet know the details of. With the murders presented on the page this way, the reader actually has more clues to the mystery than the book’s amateur sleuth does.

I picked this book up as part of my current obsession with cozy mysteries, and because it would qualify for Read Harder 2018 task 23: A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60. It almost qualified for the one-sitting book task, since I read nearly all of it on a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta. (And I already fulfilled that task with The Grownup.) It’s a fun read, and I like the quirky characters, and I really enjoyed the way it manages to echo the small-town settings so frequently found in cozies without taking place in a real (fictional) small town. It stands out, too, for the fact that Gladdy isn’t a newcomer to the community, like many cozy mystery protagonists; she’s been living in Lanai Gardens for years. The book is the first in a series, so if you enjoy it, there’s more to come!

Source: Ebook checked out from my public library
Challenges: Counts for Read Harder 2018 (Task #23: A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60)

Round-Up Review: Gethsemane Brown Mysteries

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February 25, 2018

9:51 pm

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Murder in G Major (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries, #1) Death in D Minor (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries, #2) Killing in C Sharp (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries #3)

Murder in G Major by Alexia Gordon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Death in D Minor by Alexia Gordon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Killing in C Sharp by Alexia Gordon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m putting up one review for all three of these books, partly because I read them all in a span of about 4 days, and partly because it’s difficult to talk about the second and third books without spoiling the first (and second).

I stumbled across this series looking for books to fulfill the Read Harder Challenge Task #21: A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author. A cozy mystery series about an African American musician stranded in rural Ireland and recruited by a ghost (and she doesn’t believe in ghosts) to solve his murder, which was written off as a suicide decades ago? Yes, please.

Early on, I was a little skeptical about the ghost thing. (Ha! See what I did there?) But Eamon is an absolutely perfect foil for Gethsemane, and their interactions are thoroughly charming.

Of the three books, I liked the second one, Death in D Minor the best. The book introduces Gethsemane’s brother-in-law, an interesting character in his own right as well as a window into Gethsemane’s life before Dunmullach. There’s also a new ghost in town, which is just fun. And there’s a needlework sampler that plays a major role, which I found even more appealing than the music angle (but that’s me).

I liked the second book so much I immediately downloaded the e-ARC of the third book, Killing in C Sharp, from NetGalley rather than wait for the book to be published next month. When the crew of a ghost-hunting television show arrives on Gethsemane’s doorstep, you know things are about to get interesting. In fact, they get downright bizarre. There’s another new ghost, and this one is not at all friendly.

As much as I enjoyed the books, though, I am troubled by the representation of queer (apologies to those who dislike that word, but it’s really the best catch-all in this case) characters – there are a few, but none of them seem quite okay. I don’t need every queer character to be good, but when every one is evil and/or mentally ill, that’s a problem. The representation of mental illness is a little problematic, too, especially in the first book.

Overall, I found the series entertaining and engaging, which is what I want in a cozy mystery. I’ll be keeping an eye out for a fourth book in the series.

Source: Checked out from my public library (1 & 2); e-ARC via NetGalley (#3)

Reading Challenges: Counts for Read Harder 2018 (Task #21: A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author.)