cosy crime

THE HONORABLE MEMBER FOR MURDER . . . Between the covers

Maxwell Murray is personal assistant to Eliot Oakcroft MP, a handsome but utterly vacuous man with political ambitions that are routinely ignored each time there is a cabinet shake-up. The pinnacle of his career thus far is more of a gentle hillock – he is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for miscarriages of justice, an appointment mainly designed to keep Oakcroft out of the prematurely grey hair of the Chief Whip.

The body of Charlie Cley is eventually found in a Norfolk cottage. Problem is, though, he did not die three years ago when he was first reported missing, but more like three hours earlier – and from a glass of red wine laced with poison. Rebecca Cley is released from her prison cell on the perfectly reasonable grounds that when her husband died, she was under lock and key in HMP Norton St Meals.

What sort of a hero is Max Murray? Can he carry the novel’s narrative on his back for 300 pages? The short answer is – no. He is too honest, too conciliatory and too hesitant. He needs the buccaneering instincts of Diana and Ronni to drag him from the calm waters of the harbour so that he can challenge the criminal Blackbeards and Captain Kidds out there on the open ocean. Is this Cosy Crime? If one applies the AI definition, “a sub genre of crime fiction without sex, or overt violence, typically featuring an amateur sleuth solving a puzzle or murder in a close-knit or picturesque community, emphasizing puzzle-solving, humour, and with a satisfying resolution where order is restored.’ then, yes, I suppose it is. The humour here is sharp enough, and there is just enough cynicism to lift the novel above the mire of elderly ladies cycling around Cotswold villages trying to discover who killed the local Master of Foxhounds. Such books were dismembered and cleverly eviscerated by the late, great Colin Watson in his excellent book Snobbery With Violence.

The crime(s) are solved eventually. more by the perscipacity of Diana than that of Max.I have a couple of minor quibbles; the last time I went to Fincham, the pubs were quite decent, and there was no sign of the breeze-block monstrosity featured here; as anyone who holds a firearms license will tell you, a rifle and a shotgun are two quite different things. That aside, I enjoyed the book, and found it an entertaining and witty read.

David Weir was born and brought up in Edinburgh where he played a lot of rugby and sang for the Pope in a national choir at Murrayfield and in Glasgow. He was a newspaper reporter for 11 years in Fife, Hampshire, Norwich and London interviewing among others Harry Secombe, Ralph Fiennes and a lot of politicians. Then, he went to work at the House of Commons advising MPs from all parties on constitutional stuff and arcane parliamentary procedures as well as running teams reporting on the Treasury, justice, prisons, courts, migration, policing, and Northern Ireland. This is his first novel, and it will be published by Allison & Busby on 20th August.

August 12, 2026 0

A MURDER IN SPRINGTIME . . . Between the covers

Bruno Courrèges is the Chief of Police of the Vézère Valley in the Périgord region of France. It is springtime in the little market town of St Denis. The genial Bruno does have a past, and it is somewhat darker than the constant sunlight if St Denis. He was raised in an orphanage and, as a young soldier, experienced the mind numbing brutality of the Balkan wars in the 1990s. When his friend Pamela, who runs a riding stables, returns to her house and finds her lodger, Josette Quirit, battered to death on the patio, he is informed, but is forced to recuse himself from the investigation due to his friendship with Pamela. Instead, an old friend Jean-Jacques Jalipeau from Périgeux attends, along with his colleague Fabien Panton.

There are two subplots. The gentler of the two is Bruno’s concern for the declining fortunes of St Denis in commercial terms. The weekly market is shrinking: stallholders are relocating to a nearby town, and shops are losing footfall. I realise that a picturesque Dordogne town is very different from where I live – a hard-scrabble town in one of England’s more deprived areas, but at least St Denis seems to have escaped the dubious pleasures of fake barber shops, nail bars, money laundering ventures posing as vape stores, and a proliferation of bookmakers. Bruno hatches a rejuvenation plan.

As to the second, we have a mysterious prelude, apparently unrelated to St Denis or the murdered woman. I am not keen on this literary device, and I think it is over-used, but that’s just a personal grouch. In an unidentified school, a young boy is made to stand for ages, holding heavy books on his outstretched arms. Then he falls, cracks his head, and all hell breaks loose. We come to believe that this is the same Catholic boarding school that Fabien Panton was sent by his parents. The mysterious prelude makes sudden – and rather grim – sense, when it is revealed that the school matron who inflicted the fatal punishment on the schoolboy was Joséphine Tauton, convicted of manslaughter. On her release from prison she became Josette Quirit.

Bruno and Fabien have another lead. Vehicles captured on CCTV in the vicinity of the murder site are connected to a Netflix crew filming a historical drama series in the area.In the end, it is a curious blend of of technical data – the readings from a FitBit watch – and Bruno’s very human intuition that brings the killer to justice, and the novel ends on a festive note, if not for the victim and her killer, but for the market stallholders of St Denis.

This is, of course, cosy crime, but of a superior nature. Bruno is a confirmed gastronome, and the book is full of descriptions of meal preparation, rural charcuterie delicacies and, of course, delicious local wines. Bruno”s world is, of course pure fantasy, albeit of a delightful kind. Despite its perceived decline, St Denis has a proper boulangerie and a shop where a Belgian chocolatier creates his own irresistible treats. There is, of course a high class butcher, from whom Bruno thinks nothing of ordering a 35 kilo lamb in order to treat his friends to an Easter méchoui. Even the rather reduced market has stalls selling proper farm-made cheeses, and the hills around the town are still peopled by small vineyards, each producing delicious – and affordable – wines. This is heady stuff, especially for British readers in provincial towns where genuine locally produced food is either hideously expensive, or completely unavailable.

Martin Walker writes of what he knows, as in 2013, he was made a chevalier of foie gras, in the confrérie of paté de Périgueux, and also an honorary Ambassador of the Périgord, which means he gets to accompany the traveling exhibition of the Lascaux cave as it goes on display at museums around the world. He also helps promote the wines of Bergerac at international wine fairs, and was chairman of the jury for this year’s Prix Ragueneau, the international culinary prize. A Murder in Springtime is as light as one of Bruno’s superior souffles, but very entertaining. It will be published by Quercus on 18th June.

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June 17, 2026 0

MAXWELL’S ENIGMA . . Between the covers

Meiron Trow (left) and I attended the same school in Warwick, but he was a few years behind me, so it would be a lie to say we were school chums. We both went on to spend our working lives as teachers, and I share his endless cynicism about school leadership – and his boundless optimism about the decency of most of the youngsters who we taught.

Peter Maxwell, a history teacher on the south coast of England, is something of a Trow self portrait. The series began in 1994 with Maxwell’s House and now, ‘Mad’ Max returns. I am not a huge fan of modern so-called ‘cosy’ crime. Murder is abhorrent and a blight on society. Surrounding it with the cotton wool of village gossips, eccentric squires, glowing Cotswold limestone villages and inquisitive old ladies might have worked in the 1930s but for me, at least, it doesn’t work now.

What lifts the Mad Max novels is Trow’s deep sense of actual English history – and the humour. His pushbike is nicknamed White Surrey after Richard III’s charger; his son is Nolan, named after the ill-fated officer at The Charge of The Light Brigade. And then we have the throwaway cultural references. Admittedly, these will only work with readers of a certain age, but references to John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’, Are You Being Served? and lines from ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ did make me smile.

After giving what he thought was an uncontroversial talk to a local history group, Maxwell is told that he has been reported to the local police and accused of a hate crime. New readers will soon be aware that Maxwell’s wife is a police officer. His first wife died in a car accident and he has married Jacquie relatively late in (his) life.

The hate crime accusations seems just the work of a crank, but then there is an explosion in a house in town, and a body is found in the wreckage. The connection? The destroyed house was No. 38 – the same as Maxwell’s home in another part of town. Thanks to that bosom friend of both police officers and crime novelists, deoxyribonucleic acid, the charred corpse from No. 38 gets a name or, to be more accurate, several names. David Vaughan, Drake Parker, Donald Parker, Drake Parkour, take your pick, was, as they say, known to the police. He was also known to a young woman called Meriel, the teaching assistant in the Science Department at Maxwell’s school. They had been together in the audience at Maxwell’s history talk.

Unusually for the series, it is not Maxwell’s detective brain that solves the crime here, but more a mixture of happenstance and downright stupidity on behalf of the criminals. Readers who want to read more by this very prolific author might like to check out his other series, such as his Margaret Murray mysteries, or the Grand & Batchelor thrillers. He has also written non-fiction books about infamous crimes such as the Whitechapel murders and the Meon Hill murder of 1947.

Maxwell’s Enigma is witty, deftly written and thoroughly English. It is published by Joffe Books and is available now.

May 3, 2026 0

THE ANTIQUE HUNTER’S GUIDE TO MURDER . . . Between the covers

Think the beautiful county of Suffolk, with its stately churches and half-timbered villages. Think the timeless Stour and Deben valleys and their rivers, where the sun dapples the glinting water, much as it did when Constable immortalised the scene. Think antiques. Think crime and intrigue. Remind you of Sunday nights back in the day? It reminds me of the antics of Lovejoy and his friends, thirty years ago. However, this is rather different. We are in the present day, and the central character is Freya Lockwood, a skilled antique hunter who has fallen on hard times. Her former husband has let her keep their house until their daughter grew up, but now he wants it back and she is, to paraphrase the great Derek Raymond, rather like the crust on its uppers.

Freya’s background has elements of tragedy. As a schoolgirl, she was badly burned in the house fire that killed her parents, and she was brought up by her aunt Carole and began her working career as an assistant to antiques expert Arthur Crockleford. At some point they had a major falling out, and haven’t spoken in years. When Freya gets a ‘phone call from Carole to say that Arthur has been found dead in his shop, she ups sticks and travels down to Little Meddington where he had his shop.

The police have decided that Arthur’s demise is a simple case of an elderly man falling down the stairs, but then Freya and Carole are handed a letter addressed to them which begins:
“If you are holding this letter in your hands then it is over for me..”

Is there more to Arthur’s death than meets the eye? We know there is, because of the first few pages of the book, but Freya and Carole are in the dark after subsequently being told by a solicitor that the shop and its contents are now theirs. They begin to pick away at the mystery.

Arthur has arranged an antiques weekend to be held, in the event of his death, at Copthorne Manor a nearby minor stately home. He has invited several people connected with the antiques world to stay at the Manor, and it is as if he will be conducting the consequent opera like a maestro from beyond the grave.

We learn that the falling out between Freya and Arthur was a tragedy that occurred in Cairo many years earlier, Arthur and Freya were in Egypt ostensibly verifying and valuing certain items which were thought to have been stolen and were being traded on the antiques black market. Freya fell in love with a with a young Egyptian, Asim, whose family firm specialised in creating very cleverly faked antiquities. When a deal goes wrong, Asim is found dead, and Arthur sends Freya back to England. They have not spoken since, as Freya believes that Arthur was responsible for her lover’s death.

Now, back in Suffolk, at Copthorne Manor, some of the people involved in the Cairo incident are together again under the same roof, and in the vaults of the house are packing crates which contain some of the items which were central to Asim’s murder.

Everyone wants to get their hands on the precious items, but no-one is who they seem to be. The country house setting allows author Cara Miller to run through the full repertoire of Golden Age tropes, including thunderstorms, power cuts and corpses, and she has great fun as Freya and Carole eventually expose the villains.

Cara Miller (above) is the daughter of the late Judith Miller of Antiques Roadshow fame, so she certainly knows her stuff. The novel is a splendid mix of murder, mayhem and outrageous characters, and will delight those who love a good old fashioned mystery, with more than a hint of the Golden Age. It is published by Macmillan, and is available now.

March 17, 2024 0

THE CHRISTMAS APPEAL . . . Between the covers

Janice Hallett (left) invites us to return to the idyllic village of Lower Lockwood, where her book The Appeal (2021) was set. Then, law students Charlotte Holroyd and Femi Hassan solved a particularly nasty murder but, goodness me, murder seems to haunt Lower Lockwood rather as it does the unfortunate community of Midsomer, and so they are back again when another corpse is found, threatening the production of the annual village panto. Was ever a production of Jack and The Beanstalk so fraught with difficulties?

Our two sleuths (now fully qualified) spend little time on their hands and knees with magnifying glasses looking for minute physical traces which may betray the assailant; rather, they sit in front of their smartphones, perusing emails, WhatsApp messages, texts and other communications floating around in the digital ether. The clues are all there and, unlike the ancient trope of detectives trying to read messages from letters hastily burnt in fireplaces, these words can never be totally erased.

This novella is inventively set up with little or no conventional narrative and makes extensive use of graphics representing WhatsApp messages (above) and emails which are now known as ’round-robins’. Being an old pedant, I have to say that this is a misuse of the expression, as the dictionary says:

The term has come to be used to describe emails cc-d to multiple recipients, and those awful little printed slips inside Christmas cards telling friends (not for much longer, if I get them) all the wonderful things that have been happening to the sender’s family since the last Christmas card. Janice Hallett, by the way, makes fun of these dreadful things from the word go.

But I digress. You will either love the set up of the story, or hate it. I enjoyed it while it lasted – just 187 pages – but I suspect it wouldn’t work in a longer book.

The story begins when Charlotte and Femi receive a massive folder (all digital of course) of evidence from their former mentor, Roderick Tanner KC. The folder contains transcriptions of police interviews and copies of all communications between those involved when a long-dead body in a Santa Suit was found hidden in a giant beanstalk prop – made mostly of wood, papier–mâché and, heaven forfend, possible traces of asbestos. The beanstalk was constructed years previously for a production of the play, and so this is the coldest of cold cases. The mystery is solved as Charlotte and Femi pick up the hints from the emails, texts and messages, but along the way, Janice Hallett takes the you-know-what out of some of the more insufferable pretensions in modern society (below).

The Christmas Appeal initially deceives as it seems to wear a cloak embroidered with ‘Cosy Crime’, but this is soon shed in favour of some rather sharp satire. It has wit, charm and flair and is published by Viper. It is available now.

November 9, 2023 0

LOVE FROM ANGELA DYSON . . .

A tad early for a Valentine, but hey ho . . . . . . .

She loves me, she loves me not . . . .

In the pink . . .

THE LOVE DETECTIVE: THE NEXT LEVEL is written by Angela Dyson, published by Matador, and is out now.

September 29, 2019 0

DANGEROUS DECEITS . . . Between the covers

You might guess that a crime novel featuring an amateur detective called Gawaine St Clair is not going to take you down many mean streets; furthermore, were one to Frenchify its chromatic tint, then it would probably be nearer beige than noir. This being said, if you are a Golden Age fan, like dry humour, enjoy a clue-laden whodunnit and are never happier than when luxuriating in the follies and foibles of the English middle classes, then Cherith Baldry’s Dangerous Deceits will be a joy.

Gawaine St Clair seems to be a man of independent means, not unlike his aristocratic predecessor Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, and his affluence enables him to take up criminal investigations without having to make excuses to an employer for his absence from the workplace. In this case he is called upon by his aunt Christobel to solve the mysterious death of a vicar. Father Tom Coates disappeared into his vestry moments before the beginning of a service, and was not seen again until he was found some time later, all life extinct due to a fatal blow to his head with the time-honoured blunt object.

It needs to be said at this point that the novel is very, very ‘churchy’. I use the term to describe a way of life centred around the Anglican church, with attendant church wardens, vergers, flower ladies, Parochial Church Councils, the occasional Bishop, and heated disputes over liturgical practices. Anthony Trollope de nos jours? Possibly, but as an Anglican, albeit rather lapsed, I share Cherith Baldry’s obvious love of the sonorous prose of The Book of Common Prayer – the proper 1662 version, not some squeaky clean modern adaptation designed to appeal to ‘the younger generation’. She uses suitably resonant quotes as her chapter headings, none more appropriately than:

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.”

St Clair is faced with a whole repertory company of likely suspects, all – or none – of whom may have had their reasons to bash Father Tom’s head in. In no particular order, we have a choleric prep school Headmaster straight out of Decline and Fall, a woman denied communion because of her marital woes, a glib local solicitor, the dead man’s brother and sister, with whom he owned valuable shares in a family business, and a dowdy local GP with a beautiful and sophisticated wife.

Gawaine may be too arch and precious for some tastes but he fits perfectly into the Home Counties landscape with its manicured village greens and faux Tudor dwellings. I thoroughly enjoyed Dangerous Deceits and Father Tom’s killer is unmasked not amid the dusty shelves of a country house library, but in the altogether more fractious atmosphere of an extraordinary (in the procedural sense) meeting of the Ellingwood PCC. The solution, as in many a whodunnit, rests with everyone – including Gawaine, the local coppers and, in this particular case, me – making a seemingly obvious assumption early in the piece.

Cherith Baldry (right) is an acclaimed writer of children’s fiction and fantasy novels. The first in her Gawaine St Clair series was Brutal Terminations, which came out in February 2018. Dangerous Deceits is available now and is published by Matador.

January 22, 2019 0

LOCK 13 . . . Between the covers

Lock 13 features Chris Honeysett, a private detective whose cases I had never read before, despite this being the sixth in what is clearly a popular series. The previous episodes are Headcase (2005), Slim Chance (2006) Rainstone Fall (2008) An Inch of Time (2012) Worthless Remains (2013) and Indelible (2014). Honeysett, like his creator Peter Helton (more on Helton’s website here) is an artist operating near Bath in the south-west of England. His professional investigations do not pay all his bills, and he supplements his income by selling his paintings when he can, and teaching drawing and painting classes from his picturesque home, a former mill which he shares with his girlfriend, Annis.

Honeysett is engaged on an extremely dull – but possibly lucrative – case involving a gentleman called Henry Blinkhorn, an angler who, when his boat overturned in the Severn Estuary, tragically drowned. Or did he? The company faced with a hefty life insurance payout to the Widow Blinkhorn have their doubts, and Honeysett is hired to prove that Mr B is alive, well, and pulling several skeins of wool over the eyes of Griffins, the people who are taking the million pound hit over the death, or not, of the unfortunate fisherman.

A welcome distraction from the tedious observation of The Chestnuts, the Blinkhorn’s six-bedroom house in one of the many salubrious areas of Bath, comes when Honeysett’s regular model for his life drawing classes, a young lady called Verity, inexplicably disappears. With Annis – also an artist (and noticeably more successful) away painting a mural for a rich celebrity, Honeysett decides to delve into Verity’s disappearance but, as is the way with these things, he discovers that he may have bitten off more than he can chew. Verity was friendly with some rather disreputable characters, including a verminous colony of New Age Travelers who, when they are not meditating or actually traveling, have their grimy fingers in a lucrative drug dealing business.

It seems that young Verity has come into funds rather suddenly, and has realised her oft-longed-for ambition to buy a canal boat and remove herself from the stresses and strains of city life by taking to the water. By a rather fortuitous set of coincidences (both for himself and the plot) Honeysett manages to borrow a canal narrow boat in which he sets off to pursue the errant Verity. As both he and we quickly discover, “pursue’ may be over-egging the pudding, as the laws of canal boating restrict speed to 4 mph. As Honeysett makes his stately – and occasionally wayward – progress in the ironically named Dreamcatcher, he soon has a growing number of conundrums to solve. Who, for example, are the two mysteriously sunglassed gents who appear to be following him in their cabin cruiser? And what is the true story behind the tragic drowning of Neil, former owner of Dreamcatcher, in the murky depths of the titular Lock 13?

Sometimes a novel is so delightfully written that a reader can reach the last page with a smile and sense of contentment, despite the fact that nothing very dramatic or shocking, at least by the standards of some modern thrillers, has happened during the 200 pages or so which have made up the narrative. Lock 13 is one such book. Peter Helton (right) tells the story through the eyes of Chris Honeysett, and the style is fluent, conversational, occasionally erudite, often witty – but always very, very, readable. Established fans of the Honeysett series can feel duly smug that the amiable painter-sleuth has found another convert, and they can rest assured that I shall be working my way through the file of Honeysett’s previous cases. Lock 13 is published by Severn House, and will be available from 29^th December.

December 28, 2017 0

THE MUSIC OF CRIME FICTION

IV. SCHERZO

I like to think I have a wide taste in music, and can get something out of almost every genre and style. I do draw the line at ‘modern’ jazz, however. My view is – and I show my age by borrowing a phrase from the 1957 Wolfenden Report – that it should be permissible only between consenting adults, and very definitely in private. So, no Crime Fiction set around an alto sax player who plays thirty-five minute solos (sadly, he’s not fictional, but he is certainly committing a crime.)

I do love Operas, though – at least those written up to the death of Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (who would be just as wonderful even if he didn’t have six christian names.) I would add the personal caveat that for me it is sometimes better heard than seen, as stage productions can sometimes demand too much suspension of disbelief. Our chosen book, then, is Spur Of The Moment by David Linzee, and it is set around the St Louis Opera company as they prepare a performance of Bizet’s wonderful, preposterous, exhilarating four-act classic, Carmen.

The central character in the book is Renata Radleigh, an English mezzo-soprano who is employed by the St Louis Opera to sing the relatively minor role of Mercédès. Her brother, fellow ex-pat David, is also employed by the SLO, but his task is to tout far and wide for commercial sponsorship.

When a key company patron Helen Stromberg-Brand is found brutally murdered, the police suspect David Radleigh and arrest him. His motive? It seems that Helen – nicknamed Sturm und Drang – and her husband were on the verge of cancelling a huge donation. Could they have argued? Did David lose his temper with the headstrong woman?

But there could be another motive. Helen Stromberg-Brand was a national celebrity, at least in the field of pharmaceutical research. She and her team were on the threshold of patenting a revolutionary drug to combat urinary tract infection in women. In partnership with the charismatic billionaire Keith Bryson – who has the casual dress sense, long hair and boyish charm of Richard Branson – Helen’s unit at the Adams University Medical Centre were about to find even greater fame and riches. Now she lies in the police mortuary, her head shattered by a heavy glass bowl.

Renata is not the world’s most loving sister, but she refuses to accept that David could have killed Sturm und Drang, if only because he is far too wet and wimpy for murder. Together with a former reporter, Peter Lombardo, she thinks the lady’s demise was less to do with the SLO, and more to do with the cut-throat world of drug patenting.

David Linzee has himself been a ‘supernumary’ – basically the opera equivalent of a spear carrier – and he enjoys several digs at the way an opera company in a mid-sized city is run. I particularly enjoyed his jibes at the ubiquitous need for sponsorship. Linzee (right) explains that the SLO has to make sure that literally every brick in the building has corporate support. Thus we have the Peter J Calvocoressi Administration Building, the Charles Macnamara III Auditorium and – best of all – the Endeavour Rent-a-Car Endowed Artist. In this case it’s Amy Song, the woman playing Carmen.

By the time Renata and Peter think they have unraveled the mystery of who killed the formidable Mrs Stromberg-Brand, the unorthodox stage set of the Carmen production experiences a malfunction. A giant playing card land on the heroine’s head. An all-points-bulletin is issued for the only actress who can replace the stricken Ms Song – none other than our very own Renata Radleigh. Renata takes the stage in triumph, but before the distraught Don José can plunge his stage dagger into Carmen’s heart, a real killer pre-empts the drama at the bull-fighting arena.

If anything, the plot of Spur Of The Moment is even more unlikely than the full blooded passion and drama taking place on stage between the doomed gypsy girl and her battling lovers, but what the tabloid press might call THE SHENANIGANS IN SEVILLE make a wonderful backdrop for this beautifully written and sharply funny murder mystery. A tad cosy, perhaps? Maybe, but when something is as well written as this, you won’t hear me complaining. A final word, if I may. Try to get to a production of Bizet’s masterpiece as soon as you can. Why the hurry? Well, it stands to reason, surely? Not only was Bizet not Spanish, his opera may well come to be classified as ‘cultural appropriation’ as well as making harmful stereotypes of people from Seville, women who make cigars, gypsies, policemen and bullfighters. Don’t say you weren’t warned.