“Please don’t condescend to me, Mr. Sowerby, I’m not a child. Well actually – strictly speaking, and in the eyes of the law – I suppose I am a child, but still, I resent being treated like one.” This, in a nutshell, is Flavia de Luce. I adore this series! Though a quote on the book jacket describes the young protagonist as Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys (an apt description) I prefer to think of her as a young Jessica Fletcher, and the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy […]
A sadly disappointing mystery by an author I really like.
I’ve just realized that I really need to keep up with my reviews, as I opened this draft and had to think long and hard about the book to remember what it was about. That might actually be my review, right there. Mrs Smith’s actual review of The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid
The Little Gray Cells Ride Again
I picked this up from the library on a whim, ‘how is it possible for a new Hercule Poirot to exist?!?‘ The estate approved a new title by a new author, bestselling Sophie Hannah. So money, an effort to revive interest in her existing works, perhaps. The first thing I noticed, after the shock wore off, is the sheer size of this book. Agatha Christie novels are never longer than 150, 175 pages maximum. This large book is 320 pages long. Hmmmm… We begin with […]
Medieval Murder Mystery with a plague twist? Sure.
Yet another of my Kindle deals – I love my Kindle cheapies. To a point. This one is a murder mystery, which I like. It takes place in 1666 in London, which I also like. Oh, and plague is breaking out. I don’t really like plague, but the black death has always been pretty interesting. In this one, we’ve got Charlie Tuesday (the day he was put into the foundling hospital – no, seriously, that’s why). He’s a thief-taker, sort of a middle ages private […]
Morse the Third
This is my third and final Morse book, at least for a while. After three in a row, I got kind of tired of him. Here, we’re dealing with the Oxford Foreign Examinations Syndicate. It’s a group that handles school exams all over the world, including the Persian Gulf (that may be important). The book starts with a disagreement about who will be joining the syndicate, and somehow the rebel of the group reverse-psychologys them into hiring a guy they don’t really want: Nicholas Quinn. […]
Morse the Second
The second Morse book starts with a man who has interviewed to be the headmaster of a school in Oxford, the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. He meets a girl at a bus stop, and they hook up. Like you do. The girl turns out to be from the school. Her name is Valerie, and a year later, she is missing. Morse does not investigate the original missing person report. That was Chief Inspector Ainley, who was just killed in a car accident. Morse picks up […]