Genre: Mystery

Review – As If By Magic

Posted December 2, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – As If By Magic

As If By Magic

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 349
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Impossible crime stories have delighted readers since the invention of detective fiction as puzzle-lovers sought more cerebral entertainment. Following on from Miraculous Mysteries, CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards brings together a whole new casebook of mystifying locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. Featuring more great stories by John Dickson Carr, Julian Symons and Margery Allingham alongside newly rediscovered writers, this selection of stories will bring you more insight into one of the most celebrated and dazzling sub-genres of detective fiction.

I’m not always one for locked room mysteries, I must admit, but the latest British Library Crime Classics collection, As If By Magic, was actually pretty fun. It’s edited by Martin Edwards and has the usual format of short introductions before each story, though this one is opened and closed by a John Dickson Carr story. That feels only appropriate given his influence on the genre!

There is a repeat story that’s used in another collection (“The Coulman Handicap” is in a different British Library collection, not sure which), but otherwise they were all new to me, and there were some ingenious ones. Also far-fetched, of course, but that’s part of the territory with locked room mysteries. It was especially bad with (spoilers for one story ahead) the one where a pistol was shot into a tree and then the bullet fired itself at a man two hundred years later when he burned wood from that tree — though I did kinda enjoy that that one, of course, wasn’t a crime at all.

Overall, pretty fun, though that final Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) story does strike quite the macabre note, sheesh!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Death in High Heels

Posted November 29, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Death in High Heels

Death in High Heels

by Christianna Brand

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 253
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

The pursuit of fashion is a matter of life and death in the debut novel from Christianna Brand, one of the Queens of Golden Age crime fiction. Life in the West End dress shop Christophe et Cie is hard enough with all the pressures of delivering Frank Bevan’s business vision – and then comes murder, delivered by oxalic acid, transforming the boutique into a crime scene. Featuring a colourful cast of designers, models, shop floor assistants and the fresh-faced Inspector Charlesworth, this 1941 mystery brims with Brand’s signature wit and ruthless twists.

I did end up finishing Christianna Brand’s Death in High Heels, but goodness, there’s just something so mean about her work that I can’t enjoy. She does usually have a couple of gooey-sweet female characters who are absolute angels (which doesn’t 100% preclude them being the killer), but she can be so vicious about characters she wouldn’t have liked in person: gay men, unattractive women, lower class women, etc. It doesn’t help that she wrote Death in High Heels as a way of getting back at a woman she worked with. Boy, it shows.

The mystery itself was obviously going to work out a particular way, the “how” just remained, and it spent a frankly annoying amount of time trying to get there. I don’t particularly enjoy Charlesworth as an investigator in general, but boy, he was annoying. Strange times when I long for Inspector Cockrill…

I know the editor of this series rates Brand highly, but I really don’t agree.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Jumping Jenny

Posted November 26, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Jumping Jenny

Jumping Jenny

by Anthony Berkeley

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 240
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

At a costume party with the dubious theme of "famous murderers and their victims," the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk, and analyzing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the "decorative" gallows on the roof terrace.

Noticing a key detail that could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene and unwittingly casts himself into jeopardy as the uncommonly thorough police investigation circles closer and closer to the truth.

Anthony Berkeley’s Jumping Jenny shows both his playfulness with the expectations of the genre and his tendency toward misogyny, making it an interesting read that’s also pretty darn frustrating. The man had a problem with women, and a fetish about spanking them to “fix” them, and this wasn’t quite as obtrusive as in some of his books, but did flit in and out of the story.

It doesn’t help that I don’t like Berkeley’s “detective”, Roger Sheringham, at the best of times — and here he’s suspecting everyone of murder except the right person, and trying to shield everyone from looking like murderers, while getting everything absolutely wrong and making everything worse. The structure amuses for a while, but it starts to really get frustrating.

In the end, “interesting but not enjoyable as a whole” would be my verdict, even without Berkeley’s misogyny.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Posted November 23, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 338
Series: Vera Wong #1
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady--ah, lady of a certain age--who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing--a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?

I haven’t read anything by Jesse Sutanto before, but Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers sounded like fun, and several people I follow were really enthused about it. It is wittily written, with a fun found-family dynamic, but I did find that it leaned very heavily into stereotypes, and it wasn’t always clear whether Vera was misunderstanding things because she’s “old” (she isn’t that old, but she’s written like she’s eighty) or because she’s Chinese. It is subverted at times, but she matched up so well to what I know about stereotypes of older Chinese women that I was kind of put off, even though I think it’s done affectionately (and I know that it’ll be viewed with amused recognition from some readers).

I think that could’ve been used really well to make people underestimate her, but I don’t think that really happened — and her meddling genuinely caused massive problems, and could’ve ruined at least one person’s life (and possibly more). It’s not that cute when you look at it that way. I found it honestly a bit cringe, at times.

I did also figure out who the murderer was just from the shape of the story, not from internal clues (apart from, I guess, one). The ending felt… a bit too easily earned, and I didn’t enjoy Vera’s manipulations. So overall I guess we’ll have to chalk this one up to “not for me”.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – All Of Us Murderers

Posted November 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – All Of Us Murderers

All of Us Murderers

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 343
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A genre-bending Gothic mystery with a strong LGBTQIA+ romance from beloved, award-winning author KJ Charles.

When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative’s remote Gothic house on Dartmoor, he finds all the people he least wants to see in the world—his estranged brother, his loathsome cousins, and his bitter ex-lover, Gideon Grey. Nothing, he is certain, could possibly be worse.

Then the grizzled old patriarch announces the true purpose of the gathering: He intends to leave the vast family fortune to whichever of the men marries Cousin Jessamine, setting off a violent scramble for her hand and his wealth. Disinterested in being tied further to a family he can barely stand, Zeb tries to leave…only to realize that he’s been trapped. The walls are high, the gates are locked, and when the mists roll in, there’s no way out.

And there may be something trapped within the dark monstrosity of a house with them.

Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his whole heart. As the mists descend, the gaslight flickers, and terror takes its hold, two warring lovers must reconcile in time to uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale.

It took me a bit to get into KJ Charles’ All of Us Murderers: I was pretty sure I would enjoy it, because I’ve really enjoyed almost all of her books, but the opening has almost the whole cast being really unpleasant to each other. Which I should’ve perhaps expected, given that it’s heavily gothic in inspiration, but I guess it felt like a bit of added nastiness than the main character plainly has ADHD, and that’s used as a weapon against him.

That said, once Gideon and Zeb actually start talking to each other and not just sniping, and especially as they work through what happened and start working together, it becomes a lot more fun. It isn’t just Zeb with a massive target on his back, but the two of them against the united forces of Zeb’s horrible family, and you can be pretty sure they’ll win out in the end.

It didn’t take me long to figure out basically what was happening, but it was still interesting to be along for the ride and watch Zeb steadfastly refusing to believe in supernatural occurrences… and it was still fun to have the dramatic and very gothic reveals of what exactly is going on, and what the plan is.

Gideon and Zeb — once they’re talking to each other — make a good team, and I love that (despite his self-recriminations) it’s really plain that their break-up wasn’t all Zeb’s fault. There’s a bit of sharpness round the edges with how they’ve handled Zeb’s ADHD together in the past: Gideon covering for him and taking care of him, but also sometimes getting exasperated and seeming to treat him like a child, or sniping at him because of it. The relationship feels so vivid and realistic, even (or especially?) against the ridiculous gothic background.

To clarify: when I call it a ridiculous gothic background, I say this with affection. Charles was clearly having fun with the setting and genre, and I enjoyed it very much. But it’s ridiculous all the same, if you try to explain the plot outside of the story itself and all the atmospheric trappings it builds up.

I was a bit surprised by how it ended for Zeb and Gideon, because that felt pretty un-gothic — but then, they could hardly have had a happy ending if they’d let the gothic story decide their fate, and this was the best way for them to be happy. I was very pleased by that part!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – I Could Murder Her

Posted November 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – I Could Murder Her

I Could Murder Her

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 191
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Muriel Farrington is a domineering woman who, unfortunately for them, has her entire family living with her in her stately home. She tries, often successfully, to run the lives of her children, her stepchildren, her in-laws, and her husband, and she seems to be despised by all except her husband and one son.

When she is found dead one morning in her bed, the family doctor, who is old, ill, and hasn’t been very able for years, is unable to attend and bestow a certificate, which he would have done without investigation or thought.

A younger, more able and perceptive doctor has to be called in, to the shock of whoever the murderer was, and he does not find the death natural...

I Could Murder Her features E.C.R. Lorac’s series detective, Inspector Macdonald, digging once more into a tense net of family relationships and rivalries in order to discover who murdered their (rather awful) matriarch, who was a bit of a strangling vine. There are a couple of very likeable characters — straightforward, capable, earnest — of the type Lorac’s so good at writing, people with good hearts, and I didn’t guess the murderer this time at all.

It’s possible I should’ve seen it coming, because Macdonald and his subordinate seem to have had their eyes on it the whole time, but I suppose I didn’t really want it to be that character. For all that each book features an almost completely new cast, I can’t help but end up caring about Lorac’s characters, and feeling strongly about some of them.

Whiiiich means that at the end of this book I ended up feeling decidedly uncosy and unhappy, because I didn’t want that person to be the murderer and the effects on all the other characters would be awful as a result. It’s still a good mystery, and a good example of Lorac’s writing; personally it didn’t entirely work because I didn’t want it to end like that, but that tells you something about Lorac’s ability to make a reader care. Even though most of her books stand alone, each one gets me fully invested.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Mockingbird Court

Posted November 10, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Mockingbird Court

Mockingbird Court

by Juneau Black

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 249
Series: Shady Hollow #6
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In the latest installment in the beloved Shady Hollow series, everyone’s favorite vulpine investigator Vera Vixen must contend with a cold-hearted killer—and the ghost of her own past.

It’s a crisp, cool autumn in Shady Hollow, and preparations are underway for the annual Harvest Festival. Creatures have flocked from far and wide to partake in the seasonal festivities, from pumpkin carving to pie tasting to soup throwing. With all these new faces around town, it’s the perfect time for someone to slip in unnoticed.

Unless that someone is Bradley Marvel, the most famous author—and most noticeable personality—in any woodland warren. It seems the wolf is on the lam. Back in the city, a body was found in his penthouse apartment at Mockingbird Court, and Marvel skipped town before the questioning could commence.

Marvel claims to be innocent, and it’s up to Vera and her friends to piece together what might have happened that fateful night so many miles away in the beating heart of the big city. But things get complicated when Vera learns that she also knows the victim … and might even be implicated herself.

I snagged Juneau Black’s Mockingbird Court as soon as I could lay hands on it, of course — I love the Shady Hollow series, and this installment takes us back to the town and to the usual cast, after Summer’s End took us to another town. This time Vera’s in trouble, with Bradley Marvel showing up again, and skeletons from her past — barely hinted at in previous books — tumble out of the closet.

I did find the book a bit frustrating in that it felt like Vera’s relationship with Orville has barely progressed, with Orville coming off all righteous and cross, Vera failing to communicate, etc, etc. It wouldn’t have hurt to have Orville actually come after Vera for an explanation, for instance, or for Vera to stay and explain things rather than running away.

Still, it’s cute how the town come together to try to protect Vera, and it’s also nice to start to understand her backstory and how she came to Shady Hollow. I will say that I worked out the culprit quite a bit before she does, and I was a liiiittle worried by the dramatic confrontation scene — that could have been majorly frustrating! But the way it worked out wasn’t so bad.

Not my favourite of the series, I’d say, but some nice autumnal vibes, good character moments, and a reasonable if not super-exciting mystery.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Continental Crimes

Posted November 4, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Continental Crimes

Continental Crimes

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 352
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A man is forbidden to uncover the secret of the tower in a fairy-tale castle by the Rhine. A headless corpse is found in a secret garden in Paris--belonging to the city's chief of police. And a drowned man is fished from the sea off the Italian Riviera, leaving the carabinieri to wonder why his socialite friends at the Villa Almirante are so unconcerned by his death.

These are three of the scenarios in this new collection of vintage crime stories. Detective stories from the golden age and beyond have used European settings--cosmopolitan cities, rural idylls and crumbling chateaux--to explore timeless themes of revenge, deception, murder and haunting.

Including lesser-known stories by Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, J. Jefferson Farjeon and other classic writers, this collection reveals many hidden gems of British crime.

Continental Crimes is a collection of classic/Golden/Silver Age crime stories from British writers but set in Europe, and is edited as usual by Martin Edwards. It actually contains a Christie story, which is rare for the series (though Parker Pyne is a fairly meh detective), along with a non-Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle… but. I’m afraid it got a bit boring, and e.g. the Reggie Fortune story chosen was almost incoherent and had an absolutely infuriating number of random exclamations from Reggie (“my aunt!” etc etc).

It’s a fun idea for a collection, and they weren’t all duds, but the overall effect is fairly uninspiring. Despite the convincing line-up of authors, the stories just don’t sparkle, so it feels pretty stodgy.

Might be better reading one at a time/spacing them out, or just dipping in for the ones that sound interesting.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency

Posted October 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency

The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency

by Kusama Sakae

Genres: Manga, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 265
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Matsuda Kei is a private investigator who specializes in quirky cases centered on his local neighborhood around the shopping arcade. He's recently taken on a new roommate (and lover) named Kamiko who is unemployed, ruthlessly horny, and was actually a classmate from his past.

While the two work together to solve cases, they carry on in what starts as a strictly physical relationship... until Matsuda finds that this temporary situation he has entered with Kamiko might be turning into something more.

Sakae Kusama’s The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency is a one-shot manga which features a private investigator (Matsuda Kei) and a former classmate (Kamiko) who ends up running into him as part of a case. Kamiko starts freeloading on Matsuda, and it becomes obvious that they were both intrigued by each other back in school, but Matsuda judged Kamiko for his dating habits and Kamiko felt unfairly judged.

They start off in a super casual sexual relationship and have lots and lots of sex, which I think comes somewhat at the expense of developing a relationship between them. There are glimpses of it, for example when Matsuda decides to figure out what happened to Kamiko’s childhood dog in order to set his mind at rest about it, but mostly it’s just a lot of sex.

Still, when I think about it, both definitely had redeeming characteristics: Matsuda might be grumpy all the time, but he helps people out, and Kamiko begins to care about Matsuda and apply himself to doing the same work (and really throws his heart into it when Matsuda’s in trouble).

I wasn’t a huge fan of the art, but the story (the detective stuff but also Kamiko’s horndog ways) kinda reminded me a bit of Dee and Ryo in FAKE — it’s not the same story by any means, far from it, and doesn’t go as deep into either character’s background or thoughts, but that did give me a nostalgic smile.

Not for me, ultimately, but that’s mostly a personal taste thing.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Pagans

Posted October 26, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Pagans

Pagans

by James Alistair Henry

Genres: Alternate History, Crime, Mystery
Pages: 321
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Two cops. One killer. Hundreds of gods.

21st Century London. The Norman conquest never happened. The ancient tribes of Britain remain undefeated. But murders still have to be solved.

The small, mostly unimportant, island of Britain is inhabited by an uneasy alliance of tribes - the dominant Saxon East, the beleaguered Celtic West, and an independent Nordic Scotland - and tensions are increasing by the second. Supermarket warpaint sales are at an all-time high, mead abuse shortens the lives of thousands, and social media is abuzz with conspiracy theories suggesting the High Table's putting GPS trackers in the honeycakes.

Amid this febrile atmosphere, the capital is set to play host to the Unification Summit, which aims to join together the various tribes into one 'united kingdom'. But when a Celtic diplomat is found brutally murdered, his body nailed to an ancient oak, the fragile peace is threatened. Captain Aedith Mercia, daughter of a powerful Saxon leader, must join forces with Celtic Tribal Detective Inspector Drustan to solve the murder - and stop political unrest spilling onto the streets.

But is this an isolated incident? Or are Aedith and Drustan facing a serial killer with a decades-old grudge? To find out, they must delve into their own murky pasts and tackle forces that go deeper than they ever could have imagined.

Set in a world that's far from our own and yet captivatingly familiar, Pagans explores contemporary themes of religious conflict, nationalism, prejudice... and the delicate internal politics of the office coffee round. Gripping and darkly funny, Pagans keeps you guessing until the very end.

James Henry Alistair’s Pagans is set in an interesting world in which the Norman invasion of 1066 never happened, and Britain is divided into Norse, Saxon and indigenous British contingents which don’t get along super great. Britain’s also a bit of a backwater, with geopolitics all flipped around from what we know — clearly a lot more than the Battle of Hastings did and didn’t happen/work out the way we know it. That’s never explored at great length, and is actually just the backdrop for a mystery.

This works… okay. I had so many questions, including a lot of them about the marginal (nearly unknown) nature of Christians in the story, given that the Norse, Saxons and native British, or at the very least subgroups thereof, all converted to Christianity at some point in their histories, without any need for the Normans to invade. It doesn’t make sense.

If you set that aside, and accept the idea of a modern Britain that’s Saxon, Norse and indigenous British (with heavy marginalisation for “the Indij”), there are some fun details about how this works and how people experience the world, some of which are semi-reasonable to consider having grown out of Saxon, Norse and British beliefs. If you accept the context, the mystery that plays out against it is a fun one, playing the groups against one another (while having them work together in the form of the police) and leading up to quite the climax.

I actually enjoyed Aedith and Drustan’s characters, and the supporting cast; as a mystery, and with them as the cops, it’s quite fun. I could never take it quite seriously, and some of the obvious flips from reality to do with marginalisation are a bit ham-handed, but I sat back and let it take me where it wanted to go, and it was an interesting ride.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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