Read in 2025 - 18, 20, 21

I have not forgotten how to count, but my read #19 has had its own post already. The three books I am reviewing now have in common that they were all free at Amazon's Kindle shop, each of them the first in a series offered for free so that readers might get a taste for the series and buy the next ones.

#18: Death by Candlelight

Emma Davies

 

In this “cosy mystery”, the sleuth is not just one person, but a duo – and they are Adam and Eve, although not in the biblical sense.

Instead, Francesca Eve is a self-employed caterer, and Adam is the son of one of her clients. He’s only half her age and a tech nerd.

 

Fran and Adam meet under peculiar circumstances while Fran does the catering at his mother’s birthday party. The hostess and her small group of guests play a murder mystery over dinner, a game custom-ordered specifically for the event.

Everyone is given written instructions about the character they are to play for the evening, without knowing who is the intended “murder victim” – let alone who the “murderer” is, according to the game.

They appear to have great fun… until something goes deadly wrong.

 

Fran finds herself not among the suspects, but still has an interest in learning what has really happened.

She has to juggle her family life, work duties and her completely unofficial detective work, helped by Adam who shows surprisingly useful skills.

 

Of course the two of them solve the case, and of course they both are in danger at some stage or other, but as usual there is no question that they surive when the book is clearly marked the first in a series.

 

I enjoyed the story with some of the dialogue and scenes being rather funny, but I wasn’t convinced of every character and their actions.

It was a fun and easy read but not motivating me to buy more from the series.

The author's website is here.

 

 

#20: Death by Dark Roast

Kate P. Adams

 

For me, the unusual setting was mostly what made this book a good read: The main character works at a large stately home in England, probably based on Chatsworth House; a beautiful palace-like house in vast grounds, still lived in by a duke and his family, but open to visitors.

Sophie manages the cafés on the premises, and her duties also involve taking care of the catering at events in the impressive rooms and well maintained gardens.

 

A food festival is held in the grounds, and Sophie has the chance to indulge her passion for coffee with two of the stalls that sell their own local roasts and pride themselves on their uniqueness and expertise.

Then, a body is found in one of the coffee stalls, and although there doesn’t seem to be much in terms of a motive for the murder, suspects are aplenty.

At the same time, a pattern of thefts of artwork from big houses like the one where this book is set begins to emerge. Are these related in any way to the murder?

 

Sophie helps the local police (against their advice, of course) by doing some investigating of her own, assisted by one of the tour guides at the house.

For a while it seems that the more she finds out, the less close she is to solving the puzzle, but of course she succeeds in the end.

 

As I said, the setting of the house and gardens made the book interesting, plus quite a lot of small detail related to working in such a place. The author has actually worked in similar capacities at stately homes for years (although she never had to solve a murder), and it is obvious she knows what she’s writing about. One example is the mention of why no red wine is served at receptions in marble-floored halls – any spills would be very hard to clean from the precious antique surfaces, whereas champagne and white wine do not present the same problems.

 

I also liked the characters and wouldn't mind reading more of the series, although I must admit I am not keen enough to spend money on it.

 

The author's website is here.

 

#21: A Book to Kill for

Harper Lin

 

Unlike the other two, this book is set in a small town in the US, most of it happening at the local book shop.

 

The owner is an elderly gentleman who is more interested in his books and helping the local community than in making a profit.

He employs Maggie, a young woman who is very pretty without knowing it, very smart and very bookish; she doesn’t like to talk to people and only really feels comfortable talking to her boss – mostly about books, of course.

 

When the old man dies, Maggie is not only heartbroken but also fears the unwelcome changes Joshua, the man’s son and heir, is going to make to the shop.

Then, someone is found dead in the shop – accident or murder? Someone has obviously been looking for something, but who apart from the owner and his employee would know how valuable some of the old books are?

 

Maggie's life revolves around the book shop, and she does not want to lose her job, which gives her enough motivation to investigate the goings-on.

She soon learns more about the people in the small town than she ever knew, and it’s not all nice…

 

While I liked the idea behind the book, the characters didn’t really come alive for me. Especially Maggie and Joshua could have done with some more fleshing out; they were left rather flat and two-dimensional:

He was gorgeous and not much else, while her dislike to talk to people was repeated frequently, as if the reader would need constant reminding.

 

Not a total waste of time, but definitely not a series I shall look into any further.

The author's website is here.

Read in 2025 - 19

(This year's reads # 18 and 20 will be reviewed in a combined post.)

The Queen of the Tambourine

Jane Gardam

Not my picture, but it was the only one I found which showed the same edition that I bought.

During my sister and my holiday in Ripon, among several other things I bought three paperbacks, two in my favourite book shop and this one in a charity shop, one of many lining Ripon's streets (can't remember which one).

I liked the cover and the description on the back. Also, I read "Old Filth" by this author some years ago, and found it very good; you can find my 2017 review here.

This one was also a very good read, although I must admit it was not quite what I had expected.

The main character is Eliza Peabody, surrounded by a cast of neighbours, family and other people she meets in her capacity as a volunteer at a hospice. She is a keen observer, and the reader learns a lot about each of them.

The entire story is presented in the form of letters Eliza writes to her neighbour Joan. They start out as short notes, with (unwanted) advice about Joan's health and family life. No answers are ever written, but Eliza continues with her letters, which become longer and longer, revealing more and more of Eliza's own life.

But how much of what Eliza writes has actually happened, and how much of it is just in her mind? And why does Joan never answer? Why does Eliza always talk of having two dogs, when everybody else seems to be aware of only one? Has her husband really left her, and if so, why?

I don't want to tell you too much, but there are unexpected twists; it's not crime fiction, but still a mystery. I perfectly agree with one excerpts of a critic saying that she found the book "very moving when it is not being exceedingly funny".

The very end comes with one last twist. It left me with a slight feeling of disappoinment; I was expecting something more quirky, not such a neat explanation and conclusion. But see for yourselves, if you are interested.

Jane Gardam (who by the way was from Yorkshire) only died this year. She wrote many books; this was the 2nd by her that I have read. You can read about her here on wikipedia. "The Queen of the Tambourine" has its own wikipedia entry here.

Read in 2025 - 16, 17

Two more of Martha Grimes' Inspector Jury novels were this year's summer reading for me, but neither of them what was for most people constitutes a typical holiday read.

The Blue Last

On the building site in London where a pub stood until it was bombed in WWII, two skeletons are found from that time. To the family who used to own the pub (“The Blue Last”), it is clear that it can only be the daughter of the former owner and the nanny’s baby girl – she had taken out the daughter’s child for a walk when the bombing happened, sadly losing her own child in the process. 

Richard Jury’s old friend and fellow detective asks him to investigate what he believes could be an old case of identity swap.

 

For Jury, this means facing his own past; as a little boy, he lost his Mum in a bombing after he’d already lost his father in the war, and ended up in care homes – not a childhood memory he wants to revisit, but can’t avoid either.

As he starts talking to the family members of the former pub owner, he discovers that one of them is writing a book about “The Blue Last” and has been doing extensive research.

Not long afterwards, the man is found dead, and his computer as well as his notes are missing, while nothing else has been taken from his luxurious home.

What had he come across in his research that could have cost him his life?

 

While Jury keeps investigating and finding motives and suspects, a parallel storyline involes a 9-year-old girl who nobody in her family’s big house is much inclined to talk about and whose provenience is mysterious.

A 12-year-old boy is her best friend, but he has a big secret of his own to guard while at the same time juggling all sorts of odd jobs. His dog plays a role, too…

 

The cleverly constructed story reunites the reader with many of the familiar cast, introducing some new ones who may or may not make a reappearance in later books, as is Martha Grimes’ habit with the Inspector Jury series.

It ends with Jury solving the case (of course), nearly losing his life in the process and finding out things about his old friend he’d never thought possible.

 

 

The Grave Maurice

This time it’s all about horses, breeding and racing. Jury knows nothing about it really, but he is asked a personal favour by the doctor who’s been treating him in hospital after he nearly died at the end of the previous book:

Almost two years ago, the doctor's 15-year-old daughter disappeared from her grandfather’s stables, where she was spending the night to be near a sick horse, which also disappeared. No ransom was ever asked, and while the police treat it as a cold case and presume that the girl must be dead, her family have been paying a private investigator to find out what happened, and at least some of them seem to be certain that she’s still alive.

 

Out of hospital but still officially on sick leave, Jury takes on the case and finds things getting more and more curious.

His friend Melrose is roped in to pose as an expert on race horses (just as he had him pose as an expert gardener in “The Blue Last”) so that he can get up close and personal with some of the people possibly involved in the case.

 

As usual, most characters have more than one secret, some more, some less relevant to the missing girl.

Also as usual, in the end Jury manages to unravel the thicket of lies and motives, but although he solves the mystery of the missing girl and horse, it is a sad ending.

 

 

When I found these and the other Inspector Jury books at a second hand sale, I had to take what was there but was lucky to get these two in direct chronological order.

The two children playing important roles in “The Blue Last” reappear in “The Grave Maurice”, as do of course the entire cast of Long Piddleton (Melrose’s home village) as well as Richard Jury’s neighbours in Islington.

 

I really enjoyed both books, although The Grave Maurice left me sad. Jury almost dying at the end of “The Blue Last”, didn't have me worry; I knew he wasn’t dead, because the series continued. But when the book was first published, readers probably weren’t so sure more stories would follow.

Now I have finished all the Jury books I have bought at the sale, but I have one or two more by Martha Grimes on my shelf, plus three paperbacks I bought in Ripon.

Ripon 2025 - Day 2

For Wednesday (30 July), the plan was to walk to Fountains Abbey, and that‘s what we did. Somehow, we were ready to go earlier than usual and left at around 10:00 am.

We know the way so well we could probably walk it in our sleep (not that we‘ve ever sleepwalked) or blindfolded (not that I would want to try that).

It being the school holidays, we found the visitor center rather busy, but the entire estate is so vast that we knew it wasn‘t going to be too crowded.

After the shop (which we love), our next stop was Fountains Hall where we found that a room formerly not accessible to the public was now open, hosting an art installation advertised as an immersive exhibition, ‚Between Chaos and Light‘ by Ed Kluz. You can read about it here.

Just being able to see a room we‘d never been in before would have been interesting, but the installation added to the overall experience. Unfortunately, we read all the background information only afterwards in Fountains Mill - we would have benefitted from that before we sat down in the room for the installation. But we‘ll be back next week; our National Trust Explorer Pass is valid for two weeks.

Another, even more pleasant surprise, was the newly accessible additional walled garden at the far end of the already existing one in front of Fountains Hall. It is called The Quiet Garden, and encourages people to just sit quietly among the beautiful flowers and other plants, much visited by bees and butterflies.

It was there we sat on a bench to eat our sandwiches and drink the elderflower lemonade we‘d bought at the restaurant.

Fountains Mill was next, and then the abbey itself - it never fails to attract and impress me, no matter how many times I have been there. 

Some photos I would have liked to take weren‘t possible because of there being so many people, but we enjoyed our stroll through the ruins nonetheless.

Further on towards Studley Royal Water Garden, and by the time we reached the tearoom by the lake, we were both quite ready for a break.

A coke and a chocolate brownie later, we walked back through the deer park and along the grassy path, through the gate in the wall, crossing the hamlet of Studley Roger, then the path between hedges and fences back into Ripon.

We reached the cottage at around 4:00 pm. After a rest, I sat with a mug of coffee on the bench in the sun in front of the cottage, where our landlady and a little later my sister joined me for a chat.

Before starting on our evening meal, my sister and I walked to the Leper Chapel, a very special place. It was locked for the night, but we know what it looks like inside, and of course we can return before our Ripon holiday is over.

It was my sister‘s turn to prepare our meal. New spuds, quark with chives and salad were perfect.