Tag Archives: murder mystery

The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

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The Fire Court cover

The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor was published in 2018 and it’s the second book in his James Marwood series which is set just after the Great Fire of London. The previous book in this series is called The Ashes of London and in that one Marwood’s future seems much brighter as he has been noticed by the king, but his elderly father is a problem and he’s beginning to wander from home and get into trouble.

It’s 1667 and The Fire Court has been set up to settle all disputes between tenants and landlords of property which had been burnt in the Great Fire. In Marwood senior’s latest wander he thinks he has seen his wife Rachel in the distance, forgetting that she is long dead. He chases after her and eventually finds himself in the building where the Fire Court is held. But when he tracks down Rachel in an upstairs room he realises it isn’t his wife at all, but worse than that – the woman is dead – there’s been a murder.

But when he tells his son James about it, James is sceptical to begin with as he knows his father is becoming more and more confused. It isn’t long before James thinks that his father’s tale just might be true and so begins in investigation which leads to danger for him and his young assistant Cat Lovett.

This was another enjoyable read, so atmospheric of London as it must have been post the Great Fire. I see that he has published another one in this series – called The King’s Evil so I hope to get hold of a copy of that one soon.

Reading Andrew Taylor’s Wiki page I was really surprised to see that he had written the Bergerac books which were televised back in the 1980s, although he wrote those under the name of Andrew Saville.

The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths

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The Dark Angel cover

The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths was published in 2018. I’m really pleased that I’ve caught up with this Dr Ruth Galloway mystery series. This one is mainly set in Italy as Ruth has been asked to help out an Italian archaeologist whom she happened to have a brief fling with years ago. Her relationship with Harry Nelson, father of her six year old daughter is becoming more complicated and annoyingly he’s becoming more and more possessive, despite the fact that he’s obviously enjoying a normal relationship with his wife.

Reports of an earthquake in the local area mean that Nelson – who hates taking any time off for holidays – flies to Italy immediately to check up on Ruth and Kate and when a local priest is murdered Nelson becomes involved in the investigation.

I enjoyed this one a lot, I suspect that is because Nelson’s wife Michelle appears to be more than just a victim now, to me anyway.

The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths

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The Chalk Pit cover

The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths is a Dr Ruth Galloway mystery. I’m so pleased that I’ve almost caught up with this series which I’m reading in order – a necessity I think.

As usual with a Ruth Galloway book it isn’t long before she is digging up some bones and meeting up with Nelson to discuss whether the bones are really old and so not something he has to get involved in, or are much more recent meaning he has a murder to investigate. It looks to Ruth as if the bones have been boiled as they’re white and very shiny. They’ll have to go off for carbon-14 analysis.

Meanwhile some people disappear and a few homeless people are murdered. There’s always been a rumour that underneath Norwich there are miles and miles of secret tunnels, chalk mines from another age, could the missing people be there?

As ever Ruth’s personal life is as interesting as the crime/mystery aspect of these books. Towards the end of this one – and just as I had decided that she was going to be more sensible in her old age – she surprised me and it looks like everyone’s life is going to get a lot more complicated.

I’ve already borrowed the next one in this series from the library so I don’t have long to wait to find out what happens next. Honestly I think I’m more interested in the personal lives of the main characters than the mystery and crimes involved.

Murder in the Snow by Gladys Mitchell

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Murder in the Snow cover

Murder in the Snow by Gladys Mitchell was first published in 1950 and then it had the title of Groaning Spinney. My copy is a reprint by Vintage and its cover was illustrated by Laurence Whiteley. It’s very much in the British Library Crime Classics mould.

It’s almost Christmas and Mrs Bradley is in demand, she has an invitation to attend a conference of educational psychologists in Stockholm, it’s very tempting but she has also been invited to spend the festive season in the Cotswolds where Jonathan her nephew by marriage has invited her to stay in the manor house that he and his young wife have just bought.

The manor house has quite a lot of land attached to it and the locals believe that the area is haunted. It isn’t long before some of the locals receive anonymous letters. Mrs Bradley is just the person to get to the bottom of it. The atmosphere is enhanced by a fall of snow which seems to muffle sounds and add to the eeriness. It isn’t long before a body is discovered, hanging over what was known as the ghost gate. The doctor thinks it’s death by natural causes but others aren’t so sure.

The body count increases and of course Mrs Bradley sorts it all out. I still don’t like Mrs Bradley at all, for some reason Gladys Mitchell wrote her as being positively scary looking, reptilian with yellow skin and claw-like hands and her personality isn’t much better.

However I did like the mystery part of this book, for me anyway it wasn’t at all predictable.

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

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Bleeding Heart Square cover

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor was first published in 2008. I think it’s the third book by the author that I’ve read but it’s probably the one that I’ve liked least although I would give it a 3.5. I was quite disappointed by the ending because for me it left a lot of trailing threads and I thought maybe there was a sequel to it – but apparently not.

The setting is London in 1934, a time of social upheaval with Fascists rearing their ugly heads. Lydia Langstone’s wealthy husband Marcus has become involved with the Fascists, as so many of the upper class did, he’s hoping to get a top job within the organisation – well he would get an even better uniform to wear! But when Marcus attacks Lydia in a fit of pique she wastes no time in getting out of the house, reasoning that anywhere will be better than staying at home to be knocked about by a brutish husband.

Life in poverty is a shock for Lydia and people seem to think she’s just playing at being poor when they hear her cut-glass accent, but she has no option but to stay in a cheap boarding house where there are some strange people and goings on and Lydia becomes involved in what turns out to be a murder mystery.

I think that Andrew Taylor managed to conjure up the atmosphere of 1930s London, with Sir Oswald Mosley’s thugs attacking people who happened not to agree with them. Remind you of anyone?

I borrowed this one from the library and also The Scent of Death by the same author so I’ll be getting to that one soon.

Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr

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The Homicidal Colonel cover

Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr was published in 1969. The setting is 1858 New Orleans, it’s an unstable time as people can feel the probability of civil war in the near future. The story involves voodoo which is apparently called Papa La-Bas in New Orleans and isn’t always a force for evil, it can be used for good too.

There’s murder, romance, American southern gentility and for me it didn’t half drag, but I struggled on to the end, probably because there was a likeable Scotsman in it. As I recall John Dickson Carr was of Scottish extraction.

I did have a bit of a laugh at one point though as a character says: “I won’t ask about the state of the banking business. I won’t even ask whether any widows and orphans have been swindled today.” So nothing changes.

I’d read a couple of his historical mysteries before this one and quite enjoyed them, but for me the best thing about this book was the cover, I like the look of those US paddle steamers. I blame Mark Twain!

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

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The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley was first published in 1929 but I read the recent British Library Crime Classics reprint. It has an introduction by Martin Edwards.

The book begins at a gathering of the Crime Circle, a club for crime fiction writers, and Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard has gone there to ask the writers for their help. The Scotland Yard detectives are stumped over a case of murder by poisoning and Moresby hopes that the writers might be able to give them some new ideas as to who the culprit might be.

This of course involves each of the writers in turn explaining how they think the murder was committed and by whom. They all come up with different ideas of course, but which one is correct?

This isn’t my favourite style of writing as it can become a bit tedious at times with the constant repetition of facts in the case. I found myself being more interested in who the fictional detectives were based on in reality. I think that Dorothy L. Sayers was very easy to spot, but I’m not so sure about the other two female writers.

In 1979 the writer Christianna Brand wrote yet another solution to this murder puzzle and that chapter is included in this book, and Martin Edwards has the last word with his epilogue.

If you’re interested you can read about Anthony Berkeley in an interesting article by Martin Edwards here

The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths

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The Woman in Blue cover

The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths was published in 2016 and it’s a Dr Ruth Galloway mystery.

The setting for this one is mainly Walsingham in Norfolk, a place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage. Ruth’s friend Cathbad is house-sitting in Walsingham for a friend who owns a cat and has gone on holiday. Of course Cathbad – a druid – likes to think that he is very attuned to ‘atmosphere’ and he isn’t comfortable in Walsingham and particularly the cottage he’s living in temporarily.

Cathbad thinks he may have seen a vision of the virgin Mary as he has seen a woman dressed in a blue cloak, but when a woman’s body turns up the next morning he realises that she was the woman he saw.

Ruth becomes involved in this one when an old university friend contacts her. Her friend is now a female priest and she has been getting nasty letters from someone who objects to the existence of women priests.

This was a really good read with the relationships between the main characters becoming even more painful, and more realistic I think.

The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths

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The Outcast Dead cover

The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths is the sixth book in her Ruth Galloway series. As Ruth is an archaeologist specialising in bones they usually entail the discovery of a body and this one is no different.

The location of her dig is Norwich Castle which had been a prison in the past. People who had been hanged were buried in the grounds and when the body that Ruth is excavating turns out to have a hook where a hand should be, she’s sure that it’s a locally famous child murderer.

Whilst Ruth is busy with that body her one time lover DCI Harry Nelson is investigating a supposed cot death, but it’s the third such tragedy in the same family and he’s thinking that three times is just too many to be natural.

I enjoyed this one although I’m beginning to wonder what Elly Griffiths has against happy couples as in her books nobody seems to be with the correct partner. I’m not at all sure that that adds much to the reading experience. No doubt it is the sort of thing that creative writing courses suggest as being a good thing to do to introduce conflict, but it can be overdone I think.

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid

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The Distant Echo cover

Strictly speaking I read most of this book in 2017, but it’s the first one I’ve finished in 2018.

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid is the first in her Karen Pirie series, but she doesn’t turn up in this book until nearer the end of it when she’s been given the task of investigating a cold case going back 25 years or so to 1978.

The action begins in St Andrews, Fife, around the Christmas holidays where four male students are out celebrating at a local pub. It’s freezing and snowy and on the way home they stumble across a woman who is breathing her last in the snow. She has been stabbed and there’s blood everywhere.

The local police seem determined to pin the murder on the students who are almost locals and are known as ‘the lads fi’ Kirkcaldy’, another town in Fife about 20 miles from St Andrews. The ‘gentlemen’ of the press are quick to be judge and jury, so suddenly the four witnesses are suspects and everyone is turning against them.

The action moves on to 25 years later when the ‘lads’ have settled in their various occupations, but the past catches up with them unexpectedly and the nightmare begins again.

This is the first book by McDermid that I’ve read, apart from her Jane Austen re-write of Northanger Abbey. I was quite surprised by it, mainly because I had it in my mind that her writing would be a bit more cerebral – silly of me really as probably if it was then her books wouldn’t sell as well as they do.

I found this book to be just an okay read, I’ll probably give it three stars on Goodreads, but I suspect that most of my interest in it depended on me living close to all the locations and knowing the areas involved so well. McDermid even mentions a woman that I knew when I lived in Kirkaldy and she has her characters walking around so many of the local roads where I lived until recently.

I really had to suspend my disbelief towards the end of the book and I don’t think it’s fair when an author withholds information from the reader in the way that McDermid did – but maybe that’s just me being picky.

I’ll probably give the next one in the series a go to see if the Karen Pirie character grows on me, but so far McDermid has been a bit of a disappointment.