In A Daughter of Fair Verona, Christina Dodd presents a great idea that’s completely unmoored by its failure to properly match the time and place in which its characters exist. Deciding that creating an alternative history for a character is fine, if you can at least make me believe we’re in the right time period…
Once again, I’m guilty of reading a series out of order. I have no problem doing this, so long as the overall story arc of a series doesn’t get spoiled by doing so. This time it’s Disturbing the Dead by Kelley Armstrong, the third in her A Rip Through Time time-travel historical mystery series. Described…
The Comfort of Ghosts is the final novel in the Maisie Dobbs series. It references several events from past instalments, which means it contains spoilers for those books. This one also relies heavily on the reader’s knowledge of occurrences/characters in previous installments Our story begins with a funeral. Lord Julian Compton, father of Maisie’s first…
C.S. Harris’ long-running series of historical mysteries feauturing aristocratic amateur sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr reaches its nineteenth instalment with What Cannot Be Said, in which our hero is asked to investigate the murder of a noblewoman and her daughter. With the mysteries around Sebastian’s own heritage and family circumstances now resolved, the last few novels…
Quite a few of KJ Charles’ historical romances have a mystery subplot, but Death in the Spires is her first historical mystery ‘proper’. She’s taken pains to make sure readers know what to expect – that this novel is, first and foremost, a mystery and not a romance – so I’m echoing that here for…
Lady Charlotte Always Gets Her Man is a fun, old-fashioned, quick-witted romantic mystery with medium stakes and a sense of humor; it’s a good mix of genuinely suspenseful romance and lighthearted romp. It lacks nuance and has some anachronistic behavior, which means I had to drop the grade a bit, but overall it’s a good…
Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen takes us back to the height of World War II, with a mystery that intrigues and gives the reader fun characters to play with, but doesn’t really excite. It’s a pretty decent portrait of World War II-era Hollywood, but the mystery needed more punch to satisfy me. After the…
Jacqueline Winspear takes a break from her popular Maisie Dobbs series to bring us The White Lady, a story of friendship, bloodshed, and betrayal. The cottage is a grace and favor home. Elinor White had done her bit (and beyond) for England over the course of two wars and was deemed entitled to the quiet…
A Most Agreeable Murder is a quick but episodic parody of Austenian/Regency tropes. It combines a number of different storytelling methods (such as book excerpts and newspaper clippings) to tell the tale of a group of people who gather at a house party in a remote English town. Murder, obviously, ensues. The book is a…
This is the seventh book in the Burning Cove series which takes place during the 1930s in the glamorous coastal town of Burning Cove, a seaside resort town popular with the rich and famous. I loved it! This is my favorite book in the series. It is full of suspense, murder and romance and takes place…
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