You ever just start scrolling down your library’s “available now” page, even though you have eleventy-seventy thousand books in your TBR mountain? Yeah, me too. And that’s how I wandered into two pretty good, but out of my usual genre, cozy-ish mysteries that I came here to recommend.
They’re both debut novels, and I read them on audio – They have the same narrator, Sophie Roberts, who did such a great job w/The Crime Brulee Bake Off, and that I clicked her name to see what other work she’d done & wound up at Grave Expectations. Because these were both debuts, the authors didn’t have any other work to click on, so I’m glad that worked out as well as it did.
The CBBO is paying an obvious homage to the GBBO, but does it in a cheeky & reverent way that doesn’t feel too forced or as if the author might get sued for copyright violations (having the male judge’s seal of approval be a wide grin instead of the Paul Hollywood handshake, for example). Our heroine is amateur baker & history teacher/buff Claire Walker, who is cast as a contestant on the newest season of Britain’s Battle of Bakers, set to take place in Blackfirth Park, a grand estate with restored & historic 19th century kitchen & flour mill. Since the season’s challenge is to only use ingredients available in the 19th century, where else could it be held? Of course there is the reluctant semi-grumpy bachelor & current Viscount of Colburn, Jonathan Ainsley, his great-great Gran’s murdered ghost, supposedly, and the random cast & crew members of a bustling baking show. When one of the contestants turns up dead right before the first elimination, we add in a local well-meaning but unexperienced w/murder local detective, Jonathan’s sister & cousin who are big fans of the show, and at least one cheater, and you have a quick & cozy little English mystery.
Grave Expectations is the snarky, sly, & slightly more ridiculous version – Less coziness, more random drinking & hangovers on a Tuesday kind of vibe. Here we have another Claire, only this Claire is a medium. I can’t remember if she makes the joke that she’s a ‘mediumly skilled-medium’ in the book or if that’s just a phrase that popped into my head, but it’s definitely appropriate. Claire can talk to the dead, and has been able to ever since she was a teenager & her best friend disappeared. While Sophie has never been found, Claire knows she won’t be, because her ghost has been with her ever since. Stuck forever in the late 90s/early aughts, we get the modern twist of a ghost who uses text-speech lingo (like pronouncing LOL) hanging around and helping to solve the mystery of the dead body nobody else believes exists. After she’s hired as entertainment by an old schoolmate, in yet another random country estate, the party she’s supposed to entertain is abruptly cancelled when the guest of honor – a pretty awesome 92 year old grandmother – dies. Fortunately, her death is from natural causes, but she enlists Claire & Sophie in helping out with the mysterious, mud-covered & unrecognizable spirit that seems stuck in the big house’s library. The living family isn’t as eager for that mystery to be acknowledged, let alone solved, mostly. Somehow Claire manages to enlist one of the son’s – a non-ghost-believing ex-cop – and his nonbinary & immediate-believer nibling – into helping them figure out who the mystery spook could be & what could’ve happened to them.
Both books have just enough twists to not feel like every additional chapter will be an unnecessary complication (a problem I’ve had w/other cozy mystery series), and are both obvious set ups for continuing series, deservedly so. As usual, it was the banter that kept me reading. Both Claires are quick with a quip, to their authors’ credit – “She wasn’t used to being hungover, and certainly not twice in quick succession. She couldn’t be sure she wasn’t actually the butt of a smoked cigarette that had been stubbed out on top of a bin and then found by a disgruntled fairy godmother & cursed to live as a human.” – That one’s from Grave Expectations, and hit my funny bone particularly. Anyways – good books, decent mystery plots, plenty of snark & banter.