Read in 2025 - 25: Murder on the Marshes

Murder on the Marshes

Clare Chase

The full title of this book reads "Murder on the Marhses: A completely unputdownable cozy mystery novel (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 1)".

You guessed it - it's one of the many free ebooks, first in a series, to get readers interested enough to buy the rest of the series. And you guessed it, too - I'm not going to buy the next instalments.

Not that there's anything wrong with the book, it just wasn't entirely my cup of tea. Also, I certainly didn't find it "cozy", and although I did want to find out what was going to happen next, it wasn't "completely unputdownable", either.

The story in short: An ambitious young professor is found murdered, shortly after she had received a rag doll with an anonymous note.

A young journalist (Tara Thorpe) is tasked with writing about the professor's life, and although she has had no previous contact with the murder victim, she has received an almost identical doll and anonymous note.

The journalist and the investigating detective are on opposite sides when it comes to finding out what happened before the other one does, but because of the death threat to Tara, the cases are connected and the detective has to protect the young woman as another potential victim.

Suspects for the professor's murder abound - she had as many admirers as she had rubbed people the wrong way. Was it a case of professional jealousy, a spurned lover taking revenge, or something else entirely? And where does the threat to Tara come in?

The setting is Oxford with its colleges and historic old streets, and although I have never been there myself, I found it well described.

Most of the characters were more or less credible, although some of the less important ones seemed rather black-and-white, not fully fleshed out. Also, sometimes Tara's actions weren't plausible to me as the actions of a young woman who has received a death threat (and not for the first time in her life).

But still, the story was gripping enough to make for an entertaining read; as usual with a 1st in a series, of course the reader knows that the main character is not going to die, even if it looks like it during the great showdown.

This wasn't my first read by Clare Chase; in 2024, I read another 1st in a series of hers. You can find that review as well as a link to the author's website here.