Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Crime (Historical)]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Scott0571370977|title=The Kept|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Elspeth and her 12 year old son Caleb have been beset by one of the worst types of tragedy. As a result, fuelled by Caleb's need for revenge and Elspeth's motherly love, they set out on a journey that brings them to the small Lake Erie town of Watersbridge. With their new setting comes a greater understanding of their past which is a mixed blessing that must be met head on before they have to face their future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091944503</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewLock-Up|author=Sian Busby|title=A Commonplace KillingJohn Banville

|summary=In July 1946 two schoolboys found the body of a woman on a bombsite in north London. It's a while before she's identified as Lillian Frobishersix months since the dramatic events which we read about in [[April in Spain by John Banville|April in Spain]] and Dr Quirke is now back in Dublin and living (if somewhat uneasily) with his daughter, but that produces more problemsPhoebe. Lillian was - apparently - a respectably married woman The worst of his grief is over but he irrationally blames DI St John Strafford for what happened and this has made the encounter on the bomb site had been sexual and almost certainly consensualalready strained relationship between them more difficult. And why was her husband not aware that his wife was missing? His position looks even worse They're brought together by Chief Inspector Hackett when it emerges that the body was lying on an expensive mackintosh sold of a young, Jewish scholar, Rosa Jacobs, is found in the store where he's a doormanlock-up. But was Lillian quite as respectable At first, it looked as though she would have had everyone think?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722060</amazonuk>'d gassed herself but Quirke is convinced that it was murder rather than suicide.

 {{newreview|title=The Tournament|author=Matthew Reilly|rating=3.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Michael Reilly is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine; his novels are hi-octane adventures that are often as ludicrous as they are sublime. ‘The Tournament’ is a departure from his action packed Scarecrow and Jack West thrillers; instead creating an alternative history for our own Queen Elizabeth I. Why was she such a formidable leader whose reluctance to marry and dislike of the Catholics were only part of her make-up? Reilly poses a hypothetical tale about a 13 year old Bess going to Constantinople to watch a tournament of the world’s greatest chess players. Here she will be embroiled in a murder mystery alongside her tutor Roger Ascham.Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409134229</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1529337968|title=The Return In Place of Sherlock HolmesFear|author=Arthur Conan DoyleCatriona McPherson

|summary=IIt'm still not sure which s July 1948 and Helen Crowther is cheekier of due to start work as a qualified medical almoner the BBC – either riffing following morning - on the Conan Doyle originals day that the NHS is born. She'll be working for Dr Deuchar and Dr Strasser in their own modern takes on Sherlock Holmes, or producing new editions of the original stories GP surgery and novels her job will be to help patients with those non-medical problems which affect their young stars on the front, purely to tie a few sales down of what is now out of copyrighthealth. Certainly I think The hardest part of the latter is the greater crime, given the results on screen, for the number of young job will be to persuade people picking up these classics for that the first time on the basis of the TV services she offers really are free and finding something quite against the grain of what that theydon've ever read outside t have to do anything to qualify for them. Some of the problems will require delicate handling but Helen has a problem of school must be quite largeher own which might give her some insight. Still, anything to forcefeed classics to a new audience…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849907609</amazonuk>Her marriage has never been consummated.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=057136358X|title=The City of StrangersApril in Spain|author=Michael RussellJohn Banville

|summary=In Terry Tice was a hitman, although he didn't think of himself in those terms. He saw what he did as ''a matter of making things tidy''. I couldn't resist the spring thought that he was an extreme version of 1939 The Irish Times reported that Mrs Letitia Harris, aged 53 had gone missing from her home in DublinMarie Kondo. Her car He enjoyed his job, something which occurred to him when he was found in Burma with the army ''where he got the chance to kill a lot of the following morning on little yellow fellows and had a cliff top near Shankillfine old time''. There were bloodstains in He was spending a lot of time with Percy Antrobus - who couldn't understand why Terry didn't know the car, and purpose of a bloodswizzle stick -stained hatchet surely he wouldn't drink champagne with bubbles in the shed back ''morning''? It was after Percy's death that he saw the benefits of taking up a job in Dublin, blood too in the flowerbedSpain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847563473</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B08Z8BMZ7H|title=Sherlock: His Last BowThe Mystery of Healing|author=Arthur Conan DoyleA P McGrath

|summary=We meet Solon in Pergamon in the second century of the common era and he''The End''. I got told off s the physician on duty at the munus - the games put on for writing those two simple words at the end amusement of a short story I wrote at school, aged about eleven. If it is the end, I think the teacher was saying, it should be obviouspopulace. If it The remuneration isn't, therehigh but the work gives the doctor a feeling of virtue and hones his skills: Solon ''wants''s still no way the words are necessarywarriors to live. But at least IIt'm not alone. Conan Doyle, s quite a spectacle: the south coast Doctor turned entertainer extraordinaire with all his output, was told off for magistri are the way he finished things. Holmes dead? Sorrycharge hands and when we first see them, not allowed, Mr Doyle. Holmes retired to keep bees near Eastbourne? Beyond they're sprinkling gold dust onto the pale, Sir – bring him back. You donlions't like the labour of proving your genius invention manes to be such a genius? Toughmake them look more impressive. And so we come The sagitarii are the archers and the beastiarii are the condemned criminals who are going to 'His Last Bow', which Watson tells us is fight for their lives with the final, final, ending story with which to conclude, and a few otherswild animals. He wasnToday, it't exactly correct about it being s the last ones, thoughcrocodiles.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849907617</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Bones of Paris1529337925|authortitle=Laurie R King|rating=4|genre=Crime The Mirror Dance (HistoricalDandy Gilver)|summary=It is 1929 and Harris Stuyvesant has now left the Bureau of Investigation and England behind him and is working as a Private Investigator in Europe. An American, whom Stuyvesant had met, has gone missing and Stuyvesant is approached by her Uncle and her Mother to find her. The missing girl, Pip Crosby, was involved with a group of artists in the Montparnasse and Montmartre areas of the city. Many of them seem to have known her, but few have seen her in some time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749015357</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Essie Fox|title=The Goddess and the ThiefCatriona McPherson|rating=4.5

|summary=Alice Willoughby may only be a child but she feels at one with India, It was the country in which she was born August Bank Holiday weekend and where her father works for the East India Company. The sights, as so often happened, it was cold enough to have the smells fire lit and Bunty the tales of the Indian gods told by Mini, her Indian ayah all contribute Dalmation wasn't inclined to leave it being home, despite to keep Dandy Gilver warm on the sub-continent having made her motherlesssofa. Therefore imagine her disgust The thought of work was almost cheering when she's left in Dandy took the hands of her Aunt Mercy (a counterfeit medium) call from Sandy Bissett in drab, dirty Victorian LondonDundee. Life isn't easy anymore but it takes on a new turn when she meets She was the mysterious Mr Tilsbury. He has publisher of a plan for her magazine and had been told that includes the theft man running the Punch and Judy show in the local park had used copies of two of the Kohher cartoon characters -IRosie Cheek and her sister Freckle -Noor diamond, Her Majestyto drum up some local interest in his show. Sandy Bissett's pride request was simple: she wanted Gilver and Osborne to warn the man about infringement of copyright - and Dandy and joyAlex would be cheaper than employing a solicitor to do the same job.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409146197</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B08LKT7HSR|title=TouchstoneMurder in the Belltower (A Miss Underhay Mystery)|author=Laurie R KingHelena Dixon

|summary=Laurie R King may be best known for her Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, but she has also written a number In December 1933 the remains of other novels, a couple Elowed Underhay were discovered in the cellar of which feature detective Harris Stuyvesantthe Glass Bottle Public House. With Ezekiel Hamett was sought in connection with the publication murder of the second in this seriesElowed and his half-brother, Denzil Hammett, the first ''Touchstone'whose body was also discovered. Kitty Underhay's long search for her mother, originally published who disappeared in 2008, has been republished, allowing those readers new to Stuyvesant, or even to King herself, June 1916 was over. Now she's determined that the man responsible for her murder will be brought to become properly acquaintedjustice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749015454</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Lovegrove HermitStephen Clarke|authortitle=Rosemary CraddockThe Spy Who Inspired Me|rating=34|genre=Crime (Historical)General Fiction|summary=Charlotte Tyler This is delighted to receive an invitation to Lovegrove Priorya spoof spy story, home of eccentric Gothic novelist Amelia Denbythat isn't about James Bond. Or Ian Fleming. The priory is surrounded by acres of picturesque parkland But it features a man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and 'likes the ladies' and Denby even has a hermit living who works for the secret service, but in the grounds in his own private retreatplanning side of things more than the active service. However Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called Margaux, when and the hermitpair end up stranded in Normandy, Brother Caspar, is found dead with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in an apparent suicidethe resistance network, it is and Lemming desperately trying to keep up to Charlotte and with her new friend Colonel Hartley to piece together the clues and unmask the murderer.!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0719811066</amazonuk>2952163855

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Luck of the Vails0349423083|authortitle=E F Benson|rating=5|genre=Crime Death and the Brewery Queen (HistoricalKate Shackleton Mysteries)|summary='The sequestered village of Vail lies in a wrinkle of the great Wiltshire downs, and is traversed by the Bath Road.' Of course the big inn is called 'The Vail Arms' and about a mile from the village is 'the big house'. Benson doesn't name the house – indeed it wouldn't have needed a name. Locally it would just be known as the big house, and any local delivery person would know where to deposit any attached to Lord Vail.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572435</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Ashton|title=Nor Will He SleepFrances Brody

|summary=Two opposing Edinburgh university student gangs are full Kate Shackleton runs her investigation agency from Batswing Cottage, ably assisted by Jim Sykes, who lives in Woodhouse and her housekeeper, Mrs Sugden. She's been approached by William Lofthouse of high jinks the night that Agnes Carnegie is found deadBarleycorn Brewery in Masham. Daniel Drummond, one of the merry-makers, Something is a prime suspect as going wrong with his business and he'd like Kate to look into it discreetly: he had an altercation with her 's hoping that his nephew and uses right-hand man, James Lofthouse, will be back from a silver cane that matches the murder weapontrip to Germany before long. Nothing is a foregone conclusion though and so dour, wily Inspector James McLevy of went to see what the Leith police is determined continental brewers were doing and what changes Barleycorn might need to uncover the truthmake. Meanwhile Robert Louis Stevenson William is worried that James is perhaps enjoying himself a little bit ''too'' much or is in town for his fathergoing to bring back a German bride but he's funeral and renews d like the business to be ship-shape before his acquaintance with McLevy which is rather fortuitous when we consider what lies aheadnephew returns.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846972515</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=MRC Kasasian0241433568|title=The Mangle Street MurdersEight Detectives|author=Alex Pavesi

|summary=March MiddletonIt's father dies, 1930 and Megan and she becomes a 20-something alone; not a good status for a Victorian woman. She therefore moves Henry are staying with Bunny at his house in with her guardian, Sidney Grice, personal (not private!) detectiveSpain. Although, as Sidney has It's unbearably hot and Bunny drank too much at lunch: he's going to have a case rest and then he wants to solve, March may as well be invisibletalk to Megan and Henry about something serious. Grice has Only it never gets that far: when Bunny doesn't emerge after his siesta his guests find that he's been employed by shopkeeper William Ashby who has savagely murdered his own wife by stabbing her 40 times and leaving the Italian word for . How can that have happened? There'revenge' on s no one else in the wall. Everyone says he did it apart from Ashbyhouse, so one of course. Therefore Grice teams up with Inspector Pound of them must be the Yard to solve the conundrum and March is there to help, whether Sidney wants her to or notkiller.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781851840</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Brody1473682401|title=Murder on a Summer's Day: The Turning Tide (Kate Shackleton MysteriesDandy Gilver)|author=Catriona McPherson|rating=54

|summary=It was Kate Shackleton's cousin in the India Office Those who sought her help to find Maharajah Narayan who had gone out hunting on were with us at the Bolton Abbey Estate and not returned, although his horse - a flighty Arab - returned riderless. The following morning a body end of [[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson|A Step So Grave]] will remember that Donald was found - but this proved engaged to be one of the grooms who had accompanied Narayan earlier in the dayMallory Dunnoch. Had he slipped jumping across the Strid They're now married and drowned? Mallory is having twins. The jump across When they arrive no one can doubt the river Wharfe looked tempting charms of Lavinia Dahlia Cherry and people were warned of the dangersher brother, but it was known that young men regularly crossed that way rather than walking to the wooden bridge or the stepping stonesEdward Hugh Lachlan Gilver. Later in the day NarayanThere are two drawbacks: they're noisy and they's body was foundre staying with Dandy and Hugh. He'd been shot through the heart Dandy and a clumsy attempt her detective partner, Alec Osborne, had been made not taken up the chance to hide look into a problem at the body - Cramond ferry when it was offered to them twice before, but only Kate Shackleton believed that there was foul playsuddenly the possibility of being out of the house at Gilverton seems irresistible. The authorities seemed determined that what had happened would be written off as 'a tragic accident'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>034940058X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah KentSeishi Yokomizo and Louise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=Burial RitesThe Honjin Murders|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=FridrikTo many readers, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men the phrase 'locked room murder mystery' is enough to make the book one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their homeread; preferably quantified by the words 'clever' or 'good'. Now Agnes awaits executionFor those who need more, imprisoned here is the extra background – we're in rural Japan in the farm 1930s. The oldest son of a lowly local an esteemed family whois belatedly getting married, rumour although the whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be – hardly anybody has turned up, what with itbeing arranged at great haste. She only has an uncle representing her family, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerousfor one thing. Margrit Jonsdottir (Either way, the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets celebrations have gone ahead as planned, only for the shocked, malnourished Agnes wedded couple to be slashed to workdeath in their private annexe before the sun rises on their marriage. Gradually Agnes reveals What with a man missing parts of his fingers being in the neighbourhood, and some mysterious use of a traditional musical instrument at the events time of that night to Margrit and Totithe crime, this case has a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablylot of the peculiar about it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>1782275002

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Daniel WoodrellB07XLM3SM6|title=The Maid's Version|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary= Life may be tough in the Missouri town where Alma grew up but Murder at least she has a job. She learns and experiences a lot as maid to the wealthy Glencross family, but many of the experiences aren't the sort she'd like to relive. To top it all off, in 1929 the Arbor, a local dance club, explodes into flames killing 42 people including Alma's younger sister Ruby. The cause remains a mystery as factions are blamed or viewed suspiciously. However Alma knows the truth, a truth that remains secret until decades later during a visit from her grandson.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444732838</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Heroes (Most Wanted)Dolphin Hotel|author=Anne PerryHelena Dixon|rating=4.5|genre=Dyslexia Friendly|summary=Trench warfare has widely been acknowledged as one of the most soul destroying forms of combat. It broke men physically and mentally. Death seemed inevitable for many, and life was so horrible that at times it must have come as release. So what is one more death among the multitudes? To Chaplain Joseph Reavely every death counts, but he can not let this one go. Morton was not killed by enemy fire - he was murdered and Joseph will not rest until justice is done. It sounds pretty straight forward, but there is far more to it than this and justice is truly poetic in this case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842995103</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bruce Macbain|title=The Bull Slayer|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Years after we left him in [[Roman Games (Plinius Secundus) by Bruce Macbain|Roman Games]], Pliny the Younger has become Roman Governor of Bithynia. Not the most hospitable of regions, its Greek residents regard the Romans with hatred; an emotion that, in many cases, is reciprocated by the Romans. No matter how bad this is though, it gets worse when a high ranking official dies mysteriously. Could it have anything to do with the religious sect of Mithras? Possibly but it's not Pliny's only dilemma; at home his beloved young wife Calpurnia is acting somewhat oddly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850798</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Brody|title=Murder In The Afternoon: (Kate Shackleton Mysteries)|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Kate Shackleton's business as a private investigator is beginning to attract interest but when there's a loud banging on the door very early one morning she soon learns the truth of the old adage that when family comes in, money doesn't. The visitor ''looks'' familiar but Kate can't quite place where she's seen the woman before. Eventually it emerges that Mary Jane Armstrong is Kate's sister. Kate was adopted as a baby and knew nothing of her natural family but Mary Jane needs help. Her children had taken food for their father at the quarry where he worked and ten-year-old Harriet reported finding her father dead on the floor of the hut, but when searchers returned to the quarry there was no sign of a body or of Ethan Armstrong either. Local opinion said that her husband had abandoned them, but Mary Jane believed her daughter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749954876</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Loupas|title=The Second Duchess|rating=5

|summary=Elizabeth LoupasElowed Underhay was just twenty-seven when she disappeared from Dartmouth in June 1916, leaving her daughter, it seemsKitty, was not in the first author care of her grandmother. A great deal of money had been spent to be inspired by the intrigue find out what happened to her and scandal of the renaissance court of Ferreraconclusion was that she was dead, mainly because there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. The poem 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning, first published Kitty has come to terms with this and in 1842 is an elegiac account reflecting 1933 she was running the popular view that Duke Alfonso d’Este murdered his first wife Lucrezia de Medici because of Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouth with her grandmother when her grandmother had to leave to look after her unfaithfulnesssister who was ill. Loupas explores some She was reluctant to leave Kitty in charge - and Kitty could not understand why. She's always coped with the mix of holidaymakers, boating people and the naval college on the themes raised edge of town before - and she's done every job in the poem hotel. And she particularly cannot understand why her grandmother's friends have been roped in to keep an eye on things ''and cleverly combines elements '' why Captain Matthew Bryant has been hired to take charge of Browning’s work with true historical accounts to create an appealing murder-mystery set against security at the sumptuous backdrop of renaissance Italyhotel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848093837</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0349423067|title=The Body on the Train (Kate Shackleton Mysteries)

|summary=When From Christmas to Easter a pawnbroker was unceremoniously robbed of valuable items which he was holding on behalf of clients he first called the police and then Kate Shackleton when the police seemed train ran from Leeds City Station to be getting nowhere. It wasnKing't just the crime which had been committeds Cross, but arriving before dawn so that the pledges had sentimental value forced rhubarb it carried could be taken to many Covent Garden. In early March 1929, one of Moony's clients and he the porters who was worried about how they would feel when unloading the boxes discovered the jewellry couldn't be returned body of a man, stripped naked and what the impact would be on ''his'' reputationwith no means of identification. He wanted Scotland Yard hit a dead end and called on the pieces back - but most services of all he wanted Kate Shackleton in the hope that her knowledge and connections in Yorkshire would give them the lead they needed. Kate immediately found herself hamstrung: Commander Woodhead remembered her assistant Jim Sykes as a child and could not come to visit terms with the clients and discuss the situation fact that she was now a woman experienced in dealing with themmurder. Simple? NoHe was reluctant to give her all the information which the police held.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749941928</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Brody1472127110|title=Dying In The WoolIndian Summer: (Kate Shackleton Mysteries) a Mirabelle Bevan Mystery|author=Sara Sheridan

|summary=Kate Shackleton had gained something of a reputation Life has changed dramatically for solving mysteries and there were plenty of those at Mirabelle, our favourite fifties sleuth, since the end of the Great War. She tracked down men who were then reunited with their families and even those who had no wish to be found war, and were not reunited. She had her own reasons always for doing this - it made her feel more positive about her own situationthe better. Her husband Gerald When she first settled in Brighton she was posted ''missingalone, presumed dead'' in the last year of the war rudderless and it was secretly grieving for Jack, the one mystery lover who died before he could leave his wife. As time went by she couldn't found in herself an ability to solvecrimes, no matter how made friends including an ebullient and determined young woman called Vesta who refused to let a little thing like racial prejudice stop her doing what she tried. But her successes wanted, and even found consolation in other areas led to her first professional investigationthe arms of a rather charming policeman.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749941871</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Gallagher1912374439|title=The Bedlam DetectiveCourier|author=Kjell Ola Dahl and Don Bartlett (translator)|rating=43.5

|summary=Authors like to claim that writing is hard workNazi-occupied Oslo, 1942. In a wayThere, that’s true – there are a really astonishing number of words I've given the game away. For in a bookthat centres around a murder, I've told you who did it – the Nazis, and it’s often very difficult surely? Well, that certainly has to remain to wrangle them from your head into coherent sentences on a page. At the same be seen in this volume, which splits its timebetween one of war, thoughwhen a young woman sees her father arrested, ''hard'' should and their store condemned as Jewish and rushes to her best friend to help – not be knowing she will never see her alive again, and the same as ''boring''late 1960s, when great consternation is being felt. It’s sad to come across authors In this timeline, a maverick agent is back in town, one who don’t enjoy the process of writingmight have been fingered for murdering that female victim, even though she and it’s so easy to tell when you’re reading he lived together with their baby as a piece of work young family, except he was thought by a writer who was actually having fun when they wrote it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091950120</amazonuk>all to have died in the War…

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edney Silvestre1786075431|title=If I Close My Eyes NowMrs Mohr Goes Missing|ratingauthor=4|genre=Crime Maryla Szymiczkova and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Historicaltranslator)|summaryrating=12th April 1961, the radio news is full of Yuri Gagarin's first earth orbit and two boys who'd had ambitions to be Tarzan, to be engineers, or medical scientists curing all diseases, suddenly had a new possibility: maybe they could be astronauts. 'Brasilia had been inaugurated less than a year earlier, but whichever of us got to be president was going to transfer the capital back to Rio. We were twelve. It was a different country. A different world3.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521322</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sax Rohmer|title=Fu-Manchu - Daughter of Fu-Manchu|rating=45

|summary=Fu Manchu Meet Zofia. A socially climbing wife of a medical professor, she's intent on making herself known as a charitable lady, and keen on her husband progressing yet through his esteemed career. In 1890s Cracow, life is dead (or is he?) pretty good, but his evil genius lives onshe knows it could always be better. Meanwhile, in other people's life could certainly be better – cholera is nearing the form city due to lack of his daughter! New narrator Greville is sent hygiene, and many people have to fetch Dr Petrie (narrator of the first three books) fall on charity and almshouses to come keep a roof over their heads. One such was Mrs Mohr, although she was rich enough to an archaeological dig where Grevillekeep private lodgings and staff in her charitable home. I say ''was''s chief Barton, an old friend of Petriefor she has vanished. Only due to Zofia'shelp does she get found, lies deadand in a place the near-lame woman could never reach by herself. (Or Just who could be killing people in a charity home, and to what end? And why does he?) From there, Zofia feel the pair, along with Nayland Smith and Superintendent Weymouth, are plunged into need to make a death-defying adventure.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686062</amazonuk>name for herself by answering those questions?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=GK Chesterton1786893762|title=The Complete Father Brown StoriesThings in Jars|author=Jess Kidd

|summary=Having read many of A child has gone missing. The detective asked to take on the case is still struggling with the shame and frustration left by a previous case, where the Father Brown short stories beforechild was not found in time. Hardly original themes for a private eye thriller. And yet . . . take another look. This detective is a woman, and after really enjoying the recent screen versionsetting is Victorian London, I jumped at with all the chance to get hold rich and colourful paradoxes of that era: technical and scientific progress jostling for space beside superstition and a fascination with the bizarre and the downright hideous. And before you're more than a couple of this TV tie-pages in omnibus, you realise just how much more unusual our heroine is than you expected. The little cleric who has such Bridie Devine may dress in half-mourning, with a mild mannerwidow's cap and stout, shiny boots, but the tobacco she smokes in her pipe (my dear, what an utterly ''fast'' thing for a keen knowledge lady to do!) is mixed with a nugget of human evilsomething, well, let's say recreational, created by her chemist friend Prudhoe. The fact that it's actually meant to cure bronchial problems is by the by. Her housemaid, being seven-foot-tall, is one also somewhat remarkable. And then, of my favourite detectivescourse, there's the ghost. Ruby Doyle, world-famous tattooed boxer (deceased) accompanies Bridie all through her investigation, and it was 's clear he has a pleasure to be able to read this complete collection of his storiessoft spot for the determined young woman. If he really exists, that is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906467</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Sheridan0349414327|title=London Calling: a Mirabelle Bevan Mystery|rating=5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Mirabelle Bevan is an intriguing character. Warm, resourceful and extremely clever, she spent her war years in intelligence (though not active duty) and then, as the war ended and her long-time lover died, she withdrew to the coast and the dubious joys of running a debt-collection agency. Accidentally getting involved in solving a major crime with her vibrant young companion Vesta gets her noticed, however, and it isn't long before she finds herself knee-deep in another mystery. A childhood friend flees London and an accusation of murder to beg Vesta and her employer to help him prove his innocence. This leads the intrepid pair into the world of smoky, music-filled basements and the black market, where they encounter criminals from all across the social spectrum.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846972434</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jacqueline Jacques|title=The Colours Snapshot of Corruption|rating=4|genre=Crime Murder (HistoricalKate Shackleton Mysteries)|summary=Mary, an impoverished cleaner, is witness to a murder. Archie is one of the first artists to work with the police and creates a picture of the man she says she saw. Taken by her looks he persuades Mary to sit for a portrait, but the man who buys the portraitwould rather buy Mary herself...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784531</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Taylor|title=The Scent of DeathFrances Brody

|summary=It’s hard to explain why Andrew Taylor’s novels are so chilling. They’re ghost stories that often lack ghostsEven detectives need a break and for Kate Shackleton, crime novels in photography gives her the mental relaxation which the crime itself feels at a remove from the rest of the actionshe needs. But that’s really When the secret of their power: while in most thrillerslocal Photographic Society proposed an outing, Kate was keen to take the bogeyman is a single entity, easy opportunity to pinpoint visit Haworth and therefore easy to excise from Stanbury, not least because the rest deeds of the healthy fictional world, things Brontë Parsonage are never being handed over so simple in that it can become a museum and her parents will be there for the universes Taylor createsevent. What is frightening in an Andrew Taylor novelcould be better than seeing her family, witnessing a momentous event and having the opportunity to take photographs of the setting for ''Wuthering Heights''? Everything Nothing could go wrong.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007213514</amazonuk> Or could it?