Madeleine's Book Log 2024

[Madeleine]

The Harbour Lights Mystery by Emylia Hall - this is the 2nd book in the Shell House Detectives series, I haven't read the first one but found this fairly easy to read as a stand alone, as the author does do a few updates.  The story is set in and around the Cornish fishing village of Mousehole, and our detectives are Ally, a widow in her mid 60s, and ex cop Jayden, who has moved down to Cornwall from Leeds, having left the force following the death of his partner.  It sounds like the Detectives are still finding their feet, but they can't help investigating when a local chef, though originally from London, J P Sharpe, is found murdered in Mousehole, not long before Christmas.  Then the pub where he works is burnt down, though no one is injured, and a mysterious letter found in his pocket points towards a local connection, but it turns out that JP has a rather chequered history, and not many people are that sorry to see the back of him. Could someone dear to both the detectives be in danger, or are they in danger themselves?  After a slow start, this picked up pace and the last part was quite gripping, and I thought the book was quite well-written, though it could have been a bit better paced, especially in the first half.  I'm intrigued to read the first book now - I read this one as a Christmas read - and there's also a 3rd book due out in March. 7/10

Edited January 12 by Madeleine

[Madeleine]

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone - this is the first in the series about the Skelf family, who run an undertaker business in Edinburgh, coupled with acting as private investigators.  The book starts with the sudden death of Jim, the patriarch, and is subsequent unorthodox ie illegal cremation in the back garden!  Rather too much detail here, but afterwards the women in his life - his widow Dorothy, their daughter Jenny and her daughter Hannah - try to pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on both businesses without him. But when Dorothy starts to go through his papers, she finds payments of several hundred pounds being made every month, for several years, to an unknown woman.  Meanwhile Jenny, unemployed and divorced and back home with her mother, takes on a seemingly straightforward PI case, following a man whom his wife suspects of having an affair.  Hannah too has an investigation of her own - when her flatmate and fellow student Mel suddenly disappears, she finds herself opening up a can of worms (literally in some of their cases) as she discovers more about her seemingly hard-working, studious friend.  Then there's also the case of the missing employee, who disappeared suddenly several years ago.  So several storylines, but the book is well written and divided into fairly short chapters focussing mainly on each of the 3 women, so the different strands are easy to follow, though by the end I was starting to think that maybe there were too many coincidences.  As it has a distinctly morbid tone, and is rather gruesome in places, I can't say I enjoyed it  overall, but the characters are all engaging, and Edinburgh is well-described, making it almost a character in it's own right.  I will definitely read more of the Skelfs, but it is rather depressing at times so maybe not to everyone's taste. 7.5/10

Edited January 20 by Madeleine

[Madeleine]

A Shetland Winter Mystery by Marsali Taylor - this starts off in a fairly light mood, with sailor Cass Lynch on dry land for once, as she's on a break from sailing for Christmas,and is back on Shetland at the cottage she has moved into with her policeman boyfriend Gavin and two cats. In the run-up to Christmas, it seems that many residents have been visited at night by trowies, little folk who live in mounds in the hills, and come down to cause mischief.  Tiny footprints lead up to doorways and windowsills, and then lead away from another window, or a catflap, but no harm is done.  Cass suspects the local children,and for a while it all bowls along, until a teenager goes missing, and then another young man is found dead on a beach -are the two cases connected?  Events then become more serious, although towards the end of the book so many people, especially the female characters, did so many silly things that I started to get a bit fed up with the tired cliche of a character heading into danger, when all they had to do was go to the police.  Having said that, it was very readable and passed the time well enough.  6.5/10

[Madeleine]

Whispers of the Runes by Christina Courtenay - this is the 3rd in the "Runes" series, which tells of a young woman who travels back to the 9th century, when the Vikings were busily battling for kingdoms in Britain.  This time it's Sara, who finds an old knife, cuts herself and is whisked back in time, where she meets a hunky (naturally) young man who's the sole survivor of a shipwreck.  As there's no one else around, she cautiously joins him as they head for York (Jorvik as it was known in that time) but are soon forced to join the Heathen Army - yes those pillaging Vikings of legend - if they want to survive, but it's not all bad, they make friends and Rurik manages to make and sell some jewellery items, as he's a silversmith by trade - and guess what Sara does for a living? Yes she's a silversmith and jewellery maker too.  No prizes for guessing where this is all heading, but to be honest the endless will they won't they, plus both of them thinking that she should have been allowed to return to her own time, got a bit repetitive after a while and the book started to drag.  It did pick up eventually in about the last third, which saved it,but this is probably the weakest of the Runes series so far.  There are another two (at least), and they do have linking characters.  An easy read but it did drag a little. 6.5/10

[Madeleine]

"The Heron's Cry" by Ann Cleeves - this is the second book in the author's new series,set in Devon, following Inspector Matthew Venn and his team. This one is focussed around a small farm and artistic community, when a doctor investigating the local health authority's care of a young man who committed suicide is found murdered in his daughter's studio, with a piece of glass from one of her pieces proving to be the murder weapon. Not long after, another artist is found murdered by the same method, in the local arts centre which is run by Matthew's husband, Jonathan. Potential conflicts of interest here seem to be overlooked by the author, but it does put Matthew Venn in an awkward position and threatens to drive a wedge between him and his husband, who wants to help, as the artists also worked at his centre. So a small community finds itself under investigation, and yet another death causes even more intrigue. Whilst not as good as the earlier Shetland series, this is still really readable, and Matthew's own issues,such as with his mother, are handled here too. 7.5/10

[itsmeagain]

I became interested in Ann Cleeves after finding Shetland on BBC was based on her writing. Oddly, a huge compendium of women's crime fiction I bought, has nothing by Ann, who lives in lovely Whitley Bay in the North East of England.

[Madeleine]

Not sure where you're based but if you're in the Uk you might be able to get some of her books in The Works, a discount book chain. It's been said before but the Shetland TV series is very different to the books, for example Tosh isn't in the books at all.

 

There is a collection called The Starlings which does have one of her short stories in, which is available online.

[Madeleine]

The Whitstable Pearl Mystery" by Julie Wassmer - this is the first in a series of books featuring Pearl Nolan, a 39 year old single mother who runs a restaurant in Whitstable, Kent and has also started a detective agency. Her first case starts when a man asks her to track down a local fisherman who owes him money from an investment which went wrong, but when she goes to visit the fisherman on his boat she finds him dead, caught in his anchor chain and drowned. Then her new client also turns up dead,found by Pearl, which makes the police quite suspicious of her! The detective in charge has been transferred from London and hates small towns and isn't too happy when Pearl, despite the obvious conflicts of interest, continues investigating and naturally learns more than he does. Although slightly predictable, I didn't guess the killer and there were enough back stories for the characters to keep me interested, it's also quite well-written for the cosy crime genre. There is also a TV series and I watched the first episode last night, which is based on this book. It was Ok but felt very rushed and I felt some of the casting was a bit off, though Frances Barber is perfect as Pearl's bohemian mum who helps her in the restaurant. There are several more books in this series and it looks promising. One quibble though - she mentions a character performing a 1974 Saturday Night Fever move, well SNF didn't come out until 1977......!7/10

[Madeleine]

"Mania" by L J Ross - this is the 4th book in her Alex Gregory series, I'd read the first one but not  the two in between, but, unable to find them in my ever growing tbr stacks, I went for the latest book instead. It can be read as a stand-alone, but be warned, as the ending is unresolved and will presumably continue to play out in the next book, whenever that comes out (don't think it's been written yet).  I didn't think this was the best of her books - she also writes the long running DCI Ryan series, which are generally much better, although they too have a few flaws, notably the perfection of the main character, and I have to say that Gregory is Ryan with slightly different features, ie he is of course handsome and women fall at his feet wherever he goes..... of which he is blissfully unaware,although there is a lot of UST between him and the detective assigned to the case he's helping with, Ava Hope.  It all starts during a night at the theatre, where Gregory naturally happens to be in the audience and is first on the scene, when the actor playing King Lear collapses on stage; at first it's thought to be a heart attack, but tox screening finds hemlock in his system - he was poisoned!  Was it suicide though?  Then a close contact of the man is also found dead with hemlock in his system, is it too much of a coincidence? Of course it is, and Gregory finds himself drawn in more, as he tries to profile a possible perpetrator.  The two victims knew each other from university days, so as usual it looks as if the clues lie in their past.  Then the Superintendent in charge of the crime team turns out to also be involved, which echoes the storyline of the early Ryan novels, involving a serial killer, and this gave me a sense of familiarity and repetition of a storyline being re-used, and as I got closer to finishing the book I started to suspect that the case would not be fully resolved, and it wasn't, it's left open to lead into book five.  I must admit I was bored by this at times, and almost gave up at one point, but it did pick up, with a clever sleight of hand towards the end, but I was slightly disappointed at being left hanging by the ending.  Oh well.  6/10

Edited April 17 by Madeleine

[Madeleine]

"Serpent's Point" by Kate Ellis - this is the 26th novel in the Devon based Wesley Peterson series, and this time Wesley and his team are investigating the murder of a woman on a coastal path near the area in the book's title, which is a house, where a Regency-set film is being made.  The house is also home to a small artist's colony, so there are lots of potential suspects and witnesses.  But it looks like the murder could be linked to a couple of cold cases and disappearances in other parts on the country,as the victim seemed to be conducting her own investigation, following the murder of one of her best friends a few years ago.  We also get some of the history of Serpent's Point, when two schoolgirls with metal detectors uncover a hoard of Roman coins and other artefacts, which brings in Wesley's best friend Neil, an archaeologist whose investigations always cross over with the more modern police storyline, especially when a relatively recent skeleton is discovered at the site, although it's soon dated to be about 100 years old, but this gives us the parallel story of another archaeological dig which took place a century ago.  As the police continue unearthing clues to their current murder, another woman disappears and they realise they are in a race against time. I did actually suspect who the killer was fairly early on, but there's a later twist which gives this case a suitably serpentine feeling.  Another easy read, possibly two many coincidences but it's fiction after all!  7.5/10