ramblingmads

IT’S THREE WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. AND INSIDE BROMGROVE CATHEDRAL, A KILLER IS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.

Local teacher Suzanne Hayne is dedicated, devout — and very, very dead. Snow is falling. Mulled wine is warming. Christmas is coming. But Suzanne’s body lies sprawled inside Bromgrove Cathedral’s relics centre, strangled to death.

Detective Gil Markham is called in to investigate, and soon discovers the dead woman had a remarkable talent for making enemies. The former director she helped push out of a job. The teacher sacked after a complaint she made. Colleagues who called her a meddling busybody behind her back. And an anti-religion campaigner, who despises everything the centre stands for. Any one of them might have hated her enough to kill.

But as the bells ring out for Advent, Markham is running out of time to work out which.

Then a second body is found inside the cathedral, posed as if in prayer. Someone is settling old scores, and the killer isn’t finished — not until the last carol has been sung.

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Catherine Moloney is a Liverpool writer of Irish-American heritage. After graduating in Jurisprudence from Jesus College (University of Oxford), she was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. Despite qualifying as a barrister, her first love was English; this led to a PhD in English Literature at Birkbeck College (University of London). In her academic career, she lectured and published widely on the subject of tuberculosis and nineteenth-century literature, but somehow managed to avoid contracting galloping hypochondria and turned her attention to crime fiction.

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My thoughts: I was both fascinated and repulsed by the thought of a display of religious relics – bits of dead saints (supposedly – but considering how many fingers you could buy in the medieval period, who knows) especially as having been raised in the Church of England, we did away with all of that, it’s a bit too close to worshipping icons and the Bible says not to.

The murders however are equally as odd, why was the busy body who put everyone’s backs up and had plenty of people who disliked her, left in front of a relic from St Sebastian? None of her various potential killers will admit they hated her that much  – but someone clearly did.

It turns out that some people hold grudges so long that they fester and become pure hatred, revenge driven, angry perhaps at the apparent piety of such an unpleasant person, finally driven to act out their rage.

But first of all Markham and his team have to wade through all of her other enemies, rule them out and eventually set a trap to catch the killer, before they can strike again.

Another excellent outing for this team of detectives, complete with Noakes making the most of every cake, biscuit or funeral buffet along the way and dispensing his unique wisdom as he goes.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

It’s winter in Cornwall and Maddie Penrose – amateur sleuth extraordinaire – is baking up a storm for the village Christmas fair. All is merry and bright… until there’s a murder!

Maddie Penrose has been head-to-toe in tinsel, organising a delightfully cozy Christmas market. She’s just whipped up a fresh batch of mince pies and is serving them at the opening when stallholder Steve Granger pops one in his mouth… and instantly drops dead.

Determined to clear her name, Maddie must find out who poisoned the pies. It quickly becomes clear that many stallholders at the market had a motive to kill. Could it be grouchy Ruby, whose tea blends Steve mercilessly copied and sold as his own? What about Daisy from the dairy – she isn’t pleased Steve was selling Cornish cheese to rival hers. And local butcher Connor Davis has an axe to grind too… has he been plotting to handle more than just Christmas turkeys?

But who would go as far as poisoning a mince pie? Maddie is starting to get closer to the truth when there’s another murder, this time in the village bakery. Can she unravel the clues before the killer strikes again? Or is she next on their list…?

If you love amateur sleuths and cozy festive mysteries then you will adore Fliss Chester’s totally gripping novel, perfect for fans of Fiona Leitch, Faith Martin and Agatha Christie!

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Fliss Chester lives in Surrey with her husband and writes historical cozy crime. When she is not killing people off in her 1940s whodunnits, she helps her husband, who is a wine merchant, run their business. Never far from a decent glass of something, Fliss also loves cooking (and writing up her favourite recipes on her blog), enjoying the beautiful Surrey and West Sussex countryside and having a good natter.

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My thoughts: A festive murder with a mince pie as the suspected murder weapon! Except only one person died. It doesn’t add up and while the police are investigating, baker and sleuth Maddie Penrose is just going to chat to a few people, after all it was her gran’s barn he died in.

Having organised a Christmas fete to showcase the various local artisans, Maddie was hoping it would be a success. Unfortunately someone had a different plan and they used one of her mince pies to carry it out.

However there are so many suspects, almost every stallholder at the fete had a problem with the victim, who was variously blackmailing people, creating knockoff versions of their work and generally being a rather unpleasant sort.

But most of them weren’t thinking seriously about killing, so who could possibly have it in for him? Unpopular as he was. Maddie wants to clear her name but also rescue the village from its reputation as a murderer’s chosen spot. With the fete closed until further notice, she’s got time on her hands anyway.

It was nice to meet more of the community, even if it was while they were being accused of murder, Maddie’s fete sounded really good, until Steve dropped dead, accusing one of the assembled people of killing him. Luckily I don’t like mince pies so I wasn’t too perturbed by the killer’s methods.

This is getting to be a really fun series and I really like Maddie, her gran and their cats, Crumpet and Burnt Toast.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Arya Winters makes a tiramisu to die for. Now someone has.

Arya creates wickedly quirky desserts from her home kitchen in the English village of Trucklewood. Her signature chocolate fudge cake comes with a sugar dagger plunged straight through its heart. She’s brilliant with buttercream.

People are harder. Arya has a heart of gold but absolutely no filter, so she keeps herself to herself. Then a neighbour is found dead. Poisoned. By a slice of Arya’s own tiramisu.

With the police turning her kitchen upside down, Arya has no choice but to brave the village busybodies to clear her name. Soon she’s trying — and failing — to resist dangerously charming children’s author Branwell Beam, who claims all he wants to do is help.

(That’s not even mentioning the victim’s enormous, imperious white cat. Arya’s given The Marquis a new home — and now he’s acting like he owns it.)

Busybodies she can handle. Dead bodies are another matter, especially if the next one might be hers.

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Amita is a writer, based in London. She first discovered her love for Georgette Heyer’s sparkling banter and runaway horses when she found one of Heyer’s romantic adventures in a second-hand bookstall as a teenager. There was no looking back – as in, it took another few decades to realise that Heyer was more than just a delicious obsession.

Amita’s first Regency, Unladylike Lessons in Love, comes out in 2023 and takes readers on a ride through a diverse 19th century London landscape like you’ve never seen it before. Amita’s Arya Winters series of mysteries is published with Agora. The first came out in 2021.

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My thoughts: This was very fun, like Arya, I’m not the biggest fan of people, I like cats and while not as a job, I do bake cakes from time to time.

Thankfully no one has ever died shortly after eating something I’ve made, but Arya does start off as a suspect, as it was her tiramisu that appeared to have killed someone. Except she had no reason to poison anyone. She actually liked the victim. But she’s determined to find out who actually did use her dessert as a murder weapon – hopefully before anyone else gets killed.

An entertaining, enjoyable read with quirky characters and a satisfying ending.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

He came to fight the fire. Someone made sure he died in it.

A wildfire is tearing across the North Pennines when a burning man staggers out of the flames. Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris races to help him. He’s too late.

The dead man is firefighter Barry Mayhew. But beneath his burns, the pathologist discovers two shotgun wounds. One in each leg. Someone wanted him alive when the flames reached him.

A former soldier, Harris has seen punishment shootings before. This was meant to end in death. Yet the man everyone knew as Barry Mayhew proves remarkably difficult to trace.

At the classic-car garage where he worked, he claimed he was visiting his sick mother — but this woman doesn’t exist. The trail leads instead to a hospital children’s ward, a desperately ill baby — and a woman terrified of anyone coming through the door. She knew Barry by a different name.

With the raging fire threatening the hillside cottage he shares with his two rescue dogs, Harris must uncover what the firefighter was hiding.

Then he hears of another dead mechanic. He too was shot in the legs.

They say just six handshakes connect any two people. Harris needs to trace the connections between a dead man’s different lives.

Every hand the dead man shook leads Harris to another victim. One of them leads to his killer.

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John Dean is a freelance journalist who has run his own business for twenty years and who draws heavily on his years as a crime reporter for newspapers and magazines to create his novels.

He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and cites Sherlock Holmes as his all-time favourite detective.

He lives in the South West of Scotland.

My thoughts: Burning someone to death is gruesome, a truly awful way to die. But under the fire, there lies a complicated and long buried story. As the police uncover a trail of murdered mechanics, each shot in the legs, they find themselves dealing with hardened criminals, men who stepped into the space left when the Kray twins went to prison. And revenge.

The case is knotty and the few witnesses are too scared to talk in case they’re next on the killer’s list. Liaising with multiple police forces, the team are racing against time to stop the killer and also to protect a young woman and her poorly baby from becoming part of the case.

Clever, full of twists and turns, with plenty of suspects, it takes time to unravel the truth.  

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Detective Mike Nash thought that moving back to Yorkshire from London would give him a quieter life. Little did he know . . .

The burglar has a rule: before he leaves, he empties the freezer. Tonight, in the utility room of the Old Manor House, he lifts the lid — and finds a young woman wrapped in a travel rug. Shot dead. Twenty-four hours later, he picks up a burner phone and calls the police.

Detective Mike Nash is already investigating a man found shot through the chest in a hire car, at the end of a quiet country lane that goes nowhere. No wallet. No phone. No match on any database. Now a nameless woman lies on a mortuary slab . . . waiting to thaw.

Nash can’t name either victim. He can’t say if it’s the same killer. All he knows is that bad luck comes in threes.

The gang they call The Snatchers have their orders. And this time their target is on Nash’s patch . . .

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Bill Kitson was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, a wool merchant, was a fan of crime books giving Bill access to his diverse thriller collection from a young age.

Educated at Ashville College, Bill worked in the family business before spending over thirty years as a bank executive. A keen cricketer and sportsman, the highlight of his career came when he umpired a one-day international at Lords.

He and his wife now live in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where he writes crime, romance, and general fiction.

Bill’s interests include Cricket, Crime, Crete, Cookery, Cryptic crosswords – and also Alliteration.

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My thoughts: This is such a good series, the characters are well written, the crimes are often shocking but also realistic and the cops always get their man or woman. I enjoyed seeing Mike’s teenage son Daniel take on more of a role in this story – he’s shaping up to get his own series I reckon.

The various cases the team get this time eventually weave into one and allow them to identify the victims and tighten the net around the suspect. There are bodies abandoned in cars, on rural estates and wrapped up in a rug in a freezer, a missing child and a burglar with the taste for fine dining.

It’s all very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Excellent crime fiction.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Bologna, Italy’s happiest city – or is it?

A grieving father asks Dan to uncover the truth behind the death of his gifted son, a student at Bologna’s prestigious Art Institute. Accompanied by his loyal Labrador, Oscar, Dan heads north from
Florence to investigate.

Still life or still death?

The student’s former girlfriend is consumed by grief and the Art Institute is mourning one of its brightest talents. But beneath the surface, Dan senses that someone is hiding the truth.

(Artistic) license to kill?

Doing a favour for his friend, Commissario Virgilio Pisano of the Florence murder squad, Dan soon finds himself caught up in the shady world of drug dealing, organised crime and fraud on a grand scale.

A paintbrush with death

When the killer strikes again, Dan faces one of his toughest cases yet. With Officer Oscar’s nose for trouble, he must catch the murderer before it’s too late.

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I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I studied languages at Nottingham University a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to work in Italy for seven years.

My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years.

We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only 13 years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.

I started off writing romances but after 28 of them, I knew I wanted to try something different, and so the first of the Armstrong and Oscar cozy mysteries, Murder in Tuscany, was born three years ago.

I’ve been having a lot of fun ever since getting to know the dynamic duo (and introducing them to people all over the world). These books are cosy crime [a genre I didn’t even know existed when I
started writing them). They are murder mysteries, but not gory, over-violent stuff, but stories designed to exercise the brain of the reader and to put a smile on their face.

Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to
provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations all over my beloved Italy.

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My thoughts: By now, regular blog readers will know that I love this series, and this book is no exception. I’m happy to say Officer Oscar and his canine nose come through again in solving the murder of an art student and the attempted murder of his girlfriend at Bologna’s university, one of the oldest in Europe.

When Dan is asked to look into the supposed suicide of a young man, Luca, by his grieving father, he finds plenty of evidence that it wasn’t so straightforward as the original police report states. For a start, Luca was left-handed but found with a pen in his right (nice to see some lefty representation, shame he’s the victim). 

But it’s when Bianca, his girlfriend, remembers that he was concerned that something not quite right was going on at the art college that Dan begins to dig deeper. He also helps the Italian police get an international drug dealer in the process.

He and Oscar are compared to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson by several of the characters, but I think they’ve got it the wrong way round – Oscar is Holmes, Dan his faithful John Watson, documenting their cases, in this case because Oscar is a dog, and an excellent detective.

Another highly enjoyable read, although I am now very hungry for some proper Italian food, Dan and Oscar manage to pack in plenty of stops for delicious meals!

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*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.