Join Maddie Penrose, scone baker, book lover and amateur sleuth, in her new home by the Cornish seaside. A member of her local book club has been murdered, and she’s on the case!
Maddie Penroseis settling into Cornish life with her fun and feisty grandmother, Nor. She throws herself into getting to know the locals, helping out at the village book club and enjoying the occasional G&T in the pub with handsome police officer DI Tom Trevelyan. But one sunny morning, her newfound peace is shattered when she spots Quentin, a member of the book club… dead, with a knife in his back.
To Maddie’s surprise, it transpires that almost all the other members of the book club have a motive to murder Quentin. Quentin’s own wife, a fellow reader, seems to be hiding something. The local romance author isn’t all sweetness and light, and another writer is keeping secrets. But is one of the book lovers in the sleepy seaside village really responsible for Quentin’s untimely death?
No sooner has the ink dried on the page of the first killing, another takes place – and the second victim is also a member of the book club! As Maddie frantically scrambles to get her clues down in black and white, she unearths a discovery connected to Nor. Is her gran the next victim on the list?
Can Maddie rescue Nor before her story ends in murder too? Or will the killer have the last word?
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: Maddie Penrose has a habit of finding dead bodies, and this one, washed in with the tide during the early morning midsummer swim, has clearly been dumped at sea. Local bookseller Quentin isn’t the sort of person to have enemies, but someone wanted him dead.
Then another member of the book club is killed, and Maddie tries to work out the connection between the two men’s deaths. Does it have something to do with the Pendragon Treasure and what secrets is her grandmother, Nor, keeping?
There’s some goat related shenanigans and a lot of tea and cake gets eaten as Maddie investigates, she’s able to ask questions the police wouldn’t and gradually she gets Nor to open up and tell her the truth. But not before a terrifying show down in a cave. Maybe she should stick to baking!
Another fun and enjoyable outing for this new series, hopefully in the next one Maddie and DI Tom actually go on a date rather than just hanging around crime scenes flirting.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 