Berry’s sixth Kate Hamilton mystery keeps the series fresh, utilizing Kate’s antiques expertise and that of her business partner, Ivor Tweedy, in a unique way. Being married to DI Tom Mallory means Kate has an above-average knowledge of murder investigations, too, and has helped Tom in the past.
When an extremely well-preserved body is found at an archeological dig, it’s determined to be from the 14th century, and Kate and Ivor are asked to examine and evaluate the grave goods found buried with the woman’s body, which include a huge, valuable pearl. They meet the team who found the body, composed of varied personalities and talents.
Additionally, Kate is tasked as part of her private investigators work by the wealthy landowner, whose property contains the dig, with unearthing the idenity of the buried woman, who was pregnant at the time of her death. His own wife went missing nine years ago, and a museum of the plague-ridden village was her project, one he has continued in her absence as he struggles with his grief.
Then the lead archeologist, Dr. Simon Sinclair, is found murdered on the site with pearls stuffed in his mouth, and Tom becomes involved while also trying to track a killer in an unrelated death. Sinclair’s murder has numerous suspects, and with Kate on site, Kate works in concert with Tom to obtain inside information that might not surface in a formal police interview.
Berry does a grand job of showing how Kate uses resources and ancient documents to track down the identity of the murdered woman in the midst of Tom’s investigation into the modern murder. Then another set of bones are found to ratchet up the tension. Throw in Kate’s pregnant friend, the local vet and vicar’s wife, and you have a nicely rounded plot with local threads.
The interspersion of the cold cases with the new murder unraveling give rising tension to a well-done climax that makes sense. Don’t miss Berry’s author’s note at the end about the real-life discovery of a medieval body that gave her the storyline idea.
Coffin’s second Det. Brock Justice novel more than continues the promise of the debut in the series, Crimson Thaw, with an atmospheric and charged story.
With baggage from testifying against a fellow officer following him, the state police officer and his partner’s new case takes them to the autumn back roads of small town Maine, where a woman’s body has been found at the roadside. Originally thought a victim of a motor vehicle accident, a stab wound is found on Summer Randall’s body that clouds the cause of death.
Mentoring Detective Chloe Wright, their investigation soon shakes up the small towns near Moosehead Lake, and out fall plenty of suspects. Justice and Wright follow different threads into Summer’s life, but soon Justice is running a parellel case of his own: trying to prove the officer he’d testified against is dirty to the point of unbelievable actions.
There will be affairs in the victim’s past that muddy the waters, while poachers, including a veteran who lives off the grid, all come under scrutiny and add to the tension.
This is a well-plotted police procedural that keeps the action going, and Coffin succeeds in bringing the back woods of Maine to life, populating the novel with realistic characters, while imbuing the case with a sense of urgency matched by his care to find Summer’s killer.
As an added treat, there’s a brilliant ending twist that elevates this very readable book you won’t want to put down.
Chicago’s Doll Devine, wisecracking country singer, lives with heartache, dreams, and a baggage-filled past, when murder occurs on her doorstep and brings her past front and center.
Rader-Day fills this book with Chicago reallity and childhood dreams. Doll is compelling, and the other cast are recognizable, with hidden depths. There are twists and surprises, not all good, but not all bad. And there are dogs, two cuties.
Wholly original, filled with sass, this may be Rader-Day’s best book yet.
Bennett’s Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series is a favorite of Auntie M’s, and by going back in time to the Queen’s earlier years, Bennett has given herself plenty of years to travel through cases with the lively woman who would go on to serve her nation for decades.
In this one we are brought to the height of James Bond fever. It’s 1961, with Prince Charles now 12 and Princess Anne at 10 already in love with horses. The Queen is on the royal train with her entourage that includes her sister, Princess Margaret, and her photographer husband, Anthony Armstrong Jones.
It is after dinner that one of the group claims to have seen a murder from the train’s window, not seen by any of the others who were all in the dining car. An unreliable witness, her claim still must be investigated as it has recently come to light that a photographer friend of Tony Armstrong Jones is missing.
The Queen relies on her assistant private secretary, Joan McGraw, to help her work the investigation amidst the threat of the Cold War, and an important upcoming visit to Italy with time on the royal yacht Britannia, where the Queen Mother makes an appearance.
What follows is a well-crafted mystery as the Queen uses Joan to help her get to the bottom of the death of the body seen from the train. Elizabeth’s wit and intuition is called on, and her ability to use her staff to her ends is delightful.
A master of Icelandic noir, with several popular series and many awards to his credit, Indridason bring a new Detective Konrad mystery to readers. And if you have read some of his others, there are a few brief references that canny readers will catch.
Now retired, the detective continues to pursue his father’s killer. This cold case of the murdered man, not a pleasant person, has occupied Konrad over several years but readers will be quick to understand his background if this is their first read in the series.
It’s not just this case that takes up his time. When a Reykjavik woman is found murdered in her home, Konrad’s phone number is on her desk and he’s notified by the current detective on the case. Valborg had approached him recently, asking for his help in finding the child she gave up for adoption many years ago, over fifty in fact, and faced with that kind of time lag, Konrad hadn’t acquiesced.
But now that she’s dead he feels compelled to figure out what happened to her child, despite having very little knowledge, not even the sex of the child.
This is where Indridason shines, in following Konrad’s private investigation as he ferrets out leads and information from almost thin air as he digs into the woman’s past. It’s a complicated route but one that leads to an unexpected resolution, with surprising stops and starts along the way.
As the tension rises, crimes from the past are unearthed. This is an absorbing story of the echoes of old crimes that last through the years.
After bringing Nicola Upson’s The Christmas Clue and Mandy Morton’s Six Tails at Midnight to your attention, I’m adding two new releases that would make great gifts for the readers on your list that are not set on Christmas but are delightful reads:
Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club is a favorite series of many readers with good reason. The vastly different foursome of Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim have spent the past year differently after the events of the last installment, The Last Devil to Die.
But with The Impossible Fortune, a wedding (Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, long-yearned for by Joyce) brings the group together for a happy occasion. Then a wedding guest, Nick Silver, who knows of Elizabeth’s history, asks for her help . . . and disappears soon after.
Hoping to grill his business partner, Holly Lewis, only leads to a devastating result, and soon the group are mired deeply in this investigation which revolves around an uncrackable code that leads to riches.
Joanna feels she should help as Nick is a pal of her new husband, and soon adds her help. Ron’s daughter, Suzi, needs help, too, in getting rid of her abusive thug of a husband, and soon her son Kendrick is added to the population. And Ibrahim’s client Connie, newly out of prison, is mentoring a young woman, Tia, in a highly unusual manner.
It’s a wild ride that manages to come together with startling results along the way. Intricately plotted, and with Osman’s trademark humor but clear-sighted view of human nature, this will please any reader on your list.
Sophie Hannah, the gifted author chosen by Agatha Christie’s family to resurrect Hercule Poirot, gives us a convoluted mystery, The Last Death of the Year, set on New Year’s Eve, 1932, when Poirot and his detective inspector cohort, Edward Catchpool, travel to a remote Greek Island at the the behest of the owner.
The island of Lamperos contains tiny horses, goats, and few buildings, but it does have an unusual house on Liakada Bay called Spiti Athanasiou, The House of Perpetural Welcome, set right on the sea, an attraction for Catchpool, who loves to swim at any time of year.
Their host, Nate Athanasiou, has opened his home to a phalanx of different supporters of the community project he and his good friend Matthew Fair are developing: a place where welcome and forgiveness are given to all who live there, without consideration for past actions.
While the premise seems optimistic, Nate’s nervous demeanor hints at the threat of danger as the reason he’s called for Poirot to attend. That becomes obvious when the game played after dinner, where each of the residents writes a New Year’s resolution that isn’t signed, includes one that there will be “the last and first death of the year.”
With this declaration hanging over them, it should be no surprise when it comes true . . .
A masterful look at the psychology of each character in a complicated classic mystery, where the drawing room has been replaced by a craggy house on a Greek isle.
The 22nd Doyle & Action mystery is just as fresh and compelling as the first in this long-running series, which continues to delight readers. With Sir Michael Acton and Lady Acton married police officers, Acton’s way of handling justice often has the Irish Kathleen exasperated as she tries to rein him in.
Her fey nature is helpful to him, though, and Acton enlists the very pregnant Kath to ascertain when witnesses are lying. Aided at times by ghosts only she sees in dreams, she juggles two young boys at home with minimal help. This third child is a girl, and Kath’s imminent delivery has sidelined her to easier tasks.
So when Acton tells his beloved wife he is arranging a charity gala at his ancestral home, Trestles, where a play will entertain the guests, she is immediately suspicious that more is at work, as Acton is known for his devious ways of handling things. A cold murder case mixed with an art-rig gang are at the forefront, as is a fortune to be inherited. Kathleen knows this play is a ruse for more serious business.
The chosen play is a fictional court case revolving around the characters of Sherlock Holmes’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, and soon Kathleen can see parallels to their cases. There are romantic entanglements to sort, murderers to catch, blackmailers to halt–it’s all in a day’s work for this duo who remain devious and charming together. There’s even an evil man confined to a wheelchair whose silver-headed cane may or may not contain a gun.
Cleeland’s plot evolves as Kathleen tries to find out what her exasperating husband is really up to, and this time even she is surprised. A delightful addition to an entertaining series.
Peter James’s long-running DCI Grace series, now on BritBox in a grand adaptation as Grace, has just published his 22nd in this series, The Hawk is Dead.
The backstory to this novel is fascinating: Her Majesty Queen Camilla, a huge Grace fan, asked him when she was Duchess of Cornwall in 2019 if he couldn’t see a way to bring Sussex-based Grace to London. After kicking the idea around for four years as he worked on other projects already under construction, James figured out a plot what would allow him to bring Grace and a few members of his team to the Palace.
And that kernel of an idea started when James read that the 775 rooms in Buckingham Palace were to undergo a major renovation, which would take place over the course of several years, not just for updating and modernization but for safety reasons. The Royal Collection consists of over a million very valuable art and objects held by The Crown, many in Buckingham Palace.
From that grew the idea for the entire novel, and the beginning of exhaustive research, which included James being given inside tours of the palace, and even learning how to drive a train! Always giving his realistic police procedurals a grand plot, James knocks it out of the park with this one, literally, by taking Grace from his Brighton territory to Buckingham Palace.
His team becomes involved when the Queen is traveling by train to visit hospices along the south coast. Her train must be evacuated after being derailed inside a tunnel. A harrowing scene from the train driver’s point of view brings the accident to life, and as the Queen and a trusted advisor exit the tunnel, shots ring out. While the Queen narrowly misses being assassinated, Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to Their Majesties and one of the most senior members of their household, is killed.
Grace has a nagging feeling the Queen might not have been the intended target, and readers are treated to insights into the workings of the Royal Household, and its pecking order, as well as an extensive treatment of the glories contained within the huge building as the investigation ensues.
With attention turned to the household, when a diary Sir Peregrine kept in code, more matters come to light and soon Grace and his team, especially his long-term bagman DI Branson, must sift through Not-My-King protestors; territorial tiffs with the Met, who want to take over his investigation; and missing artifacts. Then a second body is found…
This was one of the most enjoyable Grace novels to date, and as usual, gives us a window into his home life, too. But James’s intricate plotting with its exploration of life within the royal household make this a gripping story.
I’m pleased and honored to call Cambridge partners and authors, Mandy Morton and Nicola Upson, my friends for over a decade, after email correspondence let to our first meeting while attending the memorial service for PD James, our friend and mentor. Their lovely Cornwall cottage, the last thatched cottage in the seaside town of Porthleven, will be the setting for the next Nora Tierney mystery when I get around to writing it!
I’m fascinated by the idea of living with another writer and how that dynamic works. Both of these talented women have new books releasing this fall and worked on them either at their Cambridge home or the Cornwall cottage: Mandy’s No. 2 Feline Detective Agency continues her engaging series set in a world of cats with Six Tails at Midnight. Nicola’s TheChristmas Clue leaves her Josephine Tey series temporarily as this stand-alone revolves around the couple who created the popular game Cluedo, which was adapted in the US as Clue.
They’ve just been hailed in a cover article (see above) in their local Cambridge Independent, which ran a long and detailed article about the duo. The two, who are very involved in the Cambridge Arts scene and often interview each other about their new books, have also curated a wonderful event together at literary festivals: Celebrating P. D. James: A Mind to Murder. They held their launch for both Christmas books at their local Waterstones with a surprise guest—more on that in a moment.
They gave me a glimpse into two very different books written in the same house, and their writing lives in general, telling me their tea-time discussions openly center around plots, creating murders, and being first readers for each other, as well as valued critique partners. They write in different areas of their homes, but come together to talk about their progress, and are deeply involved in each other’s work. For the writers out there, think about the advantage of living with your own private critique partner and reader!
Their works are distinctly different and equally creative despite them both writing mysteries. Mandy’s Six Tails at Midnight is set at Christmas in the Cambridgeshire Fens, and brought back happy memories for the musician and arts journalist of a series she produced years ago for BBC Radio.
“The Fens are shrouded in mystery and legend, with stories of ghosts and murderers, and in this book, I couldn’t resist tapping into some of that history.” Private detectives Hettie and Tilly, along with their friends Bruiser and the Butter Sisters, set out across the snowy fens to spend Christmas at The Fishgutter’s Arms and become snowed in. With no hope of rescue, they find they are soon sharing Christmas with five Christmas spirits who threaten to ruin the festivities.
With Hettie Bagshot and Tilly Jenkins in their feline world, Mandy notes her cats are much more human than many people she’s met. “My cat characters wear cardigans, run bakeries, and are very good at solving murders without any assistance from the likes of you and me! Cats can be spiteful, cruel, vicious, and downright nasty, but they can also be cute, loving, and mild-mannered—the perfect combination for a series of crime novels.”
Six Tails at Midnight is the fifteenth book in this popular series, but Mandy began her professional life as a musician, and was the lead singer for the folk rock group Srpiguns of Tolgus. She more recently worked as an arts journalist for national and local radio. Her books can be found at Farrago Books or on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
Nicola was researching for The Dead of Winter in her Josephine Tey series, when country house parties were popular in England. Two names she kept finding were Anthony and Elva Pratt, who in 1943 created the game Cluedo, still played today.
Deciding this intriguing couple deserved their own story, Nicola set to work crafting her book surrounding the couple who developed Cluedo on their dining room table in 1943 as a distraction from wartime worries. Motivated by Anthony’s love of detective novels and true crime, the game’s playful murderous premise was inspired by the murder mystery weekends he witnessed during his musician years. The Christmas Clue, set in a snowy country house, stars Anthony and Elva, who step in to detect when a mystery game goes horribly wrong.
“I’ve loved Cluedo since I was a child. It was the board game of choice in my family, and I still have the 1970s version I played then, complete with my mum and dad’s handwriting on the old detective notes, and my own workings-out, which seem to be nothing but question marks!”
She adds: “Not only did it give me hours of pleasure and lots of happy memories, but the game introduced me to crime fiction long before I read Agatha Christie and her contemporaries, and in particular the classic English detective story and its obsession for knowing—or concealing— who did what, where and how.”
That the pair enjoyed writing their Christmas mysteries together is obvious, and their joy increased when Nicola’s book received the stamp of approval from the Pratt’s daughter, Marcia Lewis, who appeared at their Cambridge book launch at the end of September and answered audience questions.
Nicola read English at Downing College, Cambridge. Her first Josephine Tey novel was dramatized for BBC Radio 4, with several listed for the CWA Gold Dagger and Historical Daggers. She is a member of the Detection Club, and in 2024 curated the acclaimed exhibit Murder by the Book: A Celebration of 20th Century British Crime Fiction at the Cambridge University Library. Her books are available from Faber & Faber, or on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
I hope readers will enjoy discovering these talented authors. Each of these books would make lovely Christmas gifts for the readers on your list~
Sometimes a book knocks your socks off and resonates with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
Susan Breen’s Merry is just that kind of book. It’s inventive, and filled with original characters you’ll come to love, none more than Merry Bingham, a book scout who loves Dickens and Christmas and just wants to find the Christmas joy for herself and her family at a fraught time in her life. And did I mention her dog Leroy talks to her?
When Merry brings her family to London for Christmas it’s at a great cost to her, and things don’t go as this super-organized woman has planned. Hanging over her is a medical test that will change her life, no matter the outcome, and she’s desperate for one more happy holiday before she tells her family about it.
But things, like Life, soon spin out of Merry’s control on so many levels she can’t catch her breath. And then the ghost of Charles Dickens appears, and he’s angry with her!
There is humor here, and great insights into human nature. You’ll learn about the business of book scouting, literature, Dickens, and how London celebrates Christmas. The magical elements are low key and unobtrusive. Best of all, you’ll be moved by Merry and her family, and the true meaning of Christmas.
This is a gem of a book. I’ve just bought copies for several reader friends, because it’s a gift you’ll want to keep giving–it’s that good.
Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff 