I've Got My Pearls to Keep Me Warm

With the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II, the royal family has been in the news once again. While fascination with the royal family rarely wanes, the younger generations tend to grab all the headlines.  The Queen Mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 101, led a fascinating life where she encountered many of the well-known people of the day. She, like her daughter,...

Read More

Nix My Dolly

 People who are arrested for serious crimes today look for any mitigating factors to deflect blame from themselves. Murder by the Book proves that this tactic is nothing new. In 1840 the elderly Lord William Russell was found murdered in his bed when his servant came to wake him up one morning. His throat had been cut but all of the blood had soaked down into the mattress....

Read More

The things the authors do to us readers

 Everyone who goes away to begin college or university can relate to the feelings of wanting to fit in and "find your tribe." Clare is no different. She heads to Edinburgh to begin her studies not knowing anyone in the city. Clare's background is also rather murky with something having happened in her past that caused her parents to disown her. She has two roommates,...

Read More

Is there any meaning?

 The 1986 unsolved murder of then Prime Minister Olaf Palme has remained one of the world's great mysteries. It is the backdrop of Blaze Me A Sun, where the first in a series of murders takes place on the same evening in a small Swedish village. Local police officer Sven Jörgensson is called to the scene when a young woman's body is found in a car at a remote farm. He...

Read More

Setting many cats among many pigeons

 Poor Queen Victoria is 80 and really not amused this time. Just as work is beginning on the extension that will become the Victoria and Albert Musuem, a man is found dead at the construction site. Luckily for her, the museum detectives, Daniel and Abigail Wilson, are available to take the case. This is the 8th book in the "Museum Mysteries" series.When the body of museum...

Read More

A little mayo goes a long way

 Picture it: Paris 1949.  The city is still recovering from the devastation of WWII.  Julia Child and her husband Paul have recently moved to Paris due to his job with the diplomatic service. Once in Paris, Julia experiences the delights of French cuisine for the first time, and the rest is history. Shopping for ingredients for her latest culinary masterpiece...

Read More

Mrs. Castle with the carving knife in the hallway

A delicious Christmas mystery set in a spooky isolated old house with a group of estranged cousins will certainly get us all in the mood for the holiday season. The Christmas Murder Game brings together the cousins of the Armitage family to play a game to see who will inherit the old mansion. Every day from Christmas day to the 6th of January, a clue will be revealed. The...

Read More

There had been a day when you could reverse into things

Mma Ramotswe and her friends are back solving problems big and small in the latest visit to Botswana and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.  The book begins with Mma Makutsi, partner in the firm, suddenly ordering stationery, name plates, and office upgrades which make it seem SHE is in charge of the first detective firm run by ladies in that country.  Mma Ramotswe,...

Read More

Harm to Animals, Followed by Throwing Up

 If you ever think you're having a bad day, it's nothing compared to the day Amber Jamison is having at the start of Killing Me. Just a few months shy of graduating with a degree in psychology, Amber is abducted on her way home from class. When she regains consciousness, she's tied up in an unfamiliar basement. She knows what's happened: she's the latest victim of the...

Read More

Is it really as bad as it seems?

Things aren't looking too good for Callie in The Lying Wife as she informs us in the first few sentences of the book that she's a wife, mother, friend and murderer.  She's being interviewed by police about the aforementioned murder when the book opens.  The chapters alternate between Callie in the interview room being questioned and the events leading up to that.Callie...

Read More

Other Times it Dragged Like Molasses

The events in the novel go back and forth between 1994 and 2019 in the small town of Wakarusa, Indiana. In the 1994 chapters, the events and aftermath of the disappearance and murder of 6-year-old January Jacobs are described. In 2019, reporter Margot Davies returns to town to look after her uncle Luke, who is in the early stages of dementia. When Margot was a child, January...

Read More

Weird Thoughts About Sepsis and Turnips

 Audrey Lavery has always had a bit of an unsettled life. Her actress mother has been successful on the stage, but not so much when it comes to long-term relationships. Due to her mother's constant need for new male attention, Audrey has spent her childhood adjusting to a parade of step-fathers. This lack of stability seems to have influenced Audrey's life as an adult,...

Read More