Tag: crime

Review – Henrietta Who?

Posted January 13, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Henrietta Who?

Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 248
Series: Calleshire Chronicles #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A hit-and-run murder unearths a case of mistaken identity in this ā€œwell-bred, well written and genuinely superiorā€ mystery by the Diamond Dagger winner (Kirkus Reviews).

Early one morning in the quiet English village of Larking, the body of a woman named Mrs. Jenkins is found in the road. Miles away, her daughter, Henrietta, receives the bad news while working in the university library. Poor Mrs. Jenkins appears to have been the victim of a horrible car accident.

When an autopsy proves not only that this was no accident but also that Mrs. Jenkins had never had a child, young Henriettaā€™s life is thrown upside down. If sheā€™s not Mrs. Jenkinsā€™s daughter, then who is she? Itā€™s up to Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Calleshire police force to bring the murderer to justiceā€”and a sense of order back to Henriettaā€™s life.

Proclaimed by the New York Times in 1968 to be one of the yearā€™s best books, Henrietta Who? is a first-order English whodunit thatā€™ll keep you guessing until the end.

Catherine Aird’sĀ Henrietta Who? is a pretty typical classic crime story. I found it a bit flatter than the first in the series, with a bit less warmth somehow — especially since it’s weirdly very dismissive about the bond between adoptive parents and adopted children, somehow. Henrietta immediately stops referring to the dead woman as her mother, which threw me a bit. Trauma makes sense, but… I don’t know.

Anyway, the whodunnit was something I worked out from a variety of clues and the way the story was shaped, and doing that was pretty fun — it’s a fair-play mystery, I think, and if you read enough of these you start getting a spidey-sense for it.

Not a favourite, but a pleasant enough read.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Still Waters

Posted January 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Still Waters

Still Waters

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 237
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Trouble is brewing once more for the Hoggetts and their friend Chief Inspector Macdonald in Lunesdale, deep in the Lancashire fell country. The treacherous slopes and still waters of a quarry pool have become the backdrop for strange happenings by night, and after an architect surveying the area is nearly hoisted into the cold waters by an unseen assailant, the suspicions of local farmers become a matter for the CID. Loracā€™s authentic writing of the Lunesdale countryside is paired with a twisting plot in this classic of Lake District crime fiction, first published in 1949.

E.C.R. Lorac’sĀ Still Waters is another return to Lunesdale for Macdonald. It’s a bit surprising that there are several books sharing the same setting and characters, because a lot of the other books are pretty disconnected, with just Macdonald and Reeves recurring. In this one, the Hoggetts are almost the stars, particularly Giles.

It’s pretty suspenseful actually; there are a couple of tense chapters at the end where Macdonald, Reeves and several others are staking out an area to figure out what’s going on and (hopefully) catch the criminals. I’d figured out what was going on already (it’s a fair-play mystery, pretty much) but it was still really tense because it wasn’t clear whether something would go wrong, whether they’d get their guy, etc. I don’t mind having figured things out anyway, but that definitely didn’t defuse any of the tension here.

It makes fun use of the setting, which Lorac knows well because she eventually settled in the area she based the story on, and apparently it was checked by a police officer as well, which shows she did her research.

One note: one of the characters is deeply anti-Welsh. He’s corrected/ignored by other characters, but the Welshman is still very much viewed as a “foreigner” and with automatic suspicion, which is a bit uncomfortable, if not surprising.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Death in Ambush

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

Review – Death in Ambush

Death in Ambush

by Susan Gilruth

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In a tranquil Kentish village, Dr Sandys and his wife are preparing for Christmas with their guest, Liane ā€˜Leeā€™ Crauford. Festivities start badly when their party is spoiled by an enigmatic widow new to the village, and the atmosphere hits rock bottom when the pompous local nobleman and ceramic-collector Sir Henry Metcalfe unexpectedly dies. Sensing potential villains among Metcalfeā€™s circle, Lee teams up with Detective-Inspector Hugh Gordon to discover the killer playing merry hell with her holiday in this lost vintage mystery, republished for the first time since 1952.

Susan Gilruth is a new-to-me author not previously published in the British Library Crime Classics series, andĀ Death in Ambush is their Christmas-themed entry for the year. It’s set at Christmas, and there’s some Christmas presents and such at the end, but it doesn’t feel that festive, really; it’s mostly a mystery that happens to be set at Christmas.

Overall, I didn’t fall in love with it, especially because I found it kind of obvious after a certain point, but it was fun enough. The introduction notes a rather weird aspect of it: a fair bit of flirting and romantic tension between the police detective and the POV character, who is married (and whose husband does not appear). Not an element I’ve seen a lot!

It was fun enough, but reminded me more of modern stuff like the Daisy Dalrymple books somehow. I’d read more of Gilruth’s books if they get reissued in this series, but probably not seek them out otherwise.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Clues to Christabel

Posted December 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Clues to Christabel

Clues to Christabel

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 289
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When successful novelist Christabel Strange dies suddenly aged 32, the bequests are hard to fathom. She leaves one wing of the ancestral home to good friend Marcia Wentworth for her ongoing use; the rest of the house remains in the hands of her mother, grandmother and siblings. Christabel made it known that Marcia would write her biography, but leaves her sixteen volumes of meticulous diaries to wily eccentric Grandmother Strange, who loathes Marcia and refuses to allow her to see them. Dr George Caradew, Christabel's childhood friend, finds himself between opposing and increasingly hostile camps, and begins to wonder why Christabel behaved in such a peculiar way, and whether her death was really due to a fever. The possibility of foul play becomes a certainty when another murder occurs and a volume of the diaries is stolen. Gradually, Caradew pieces together the clues to Christabel's hidden life.

Clues to Christabel was the second Mary Fitt book I’ve read, and again, I really liked it. It’s more a psychological bent than some of her peers, and less focused on dogged police work but more on the people on the outside of that (even if they’re also trying to solve what happened). It really dragged me in, trying to figure out who was sincere, who was a bit of a vampire, and whether scheming meant someone was guilty or merely serving some other end.

The end of the story surprisingly made me turn against Christabel, rather — there’s a certain manipulativeness throughout, a too-good-to-be-true-ness, which left me ambivalent about her, but by the end I had my eyebrows fully raised. I won’t explain why, though: that’s definitely for you to find out by digging through the story. That didn’t change my enjoyment, to be clear: you don’t need to like Christabel, since she’s dead already right from the start.

In the end, I worked out the whodunnit part less by clues and more by certain aspects of the narrative structure, but it was fun to play guessing games all the same.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Baking Bad

Posted December 11, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Baking Bad

Baking Bad

by Kim M. Watt

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 290
Series: Beaufort Scales #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A tranquil village.
A poisoned cupcake.
A murdered vicar.

A simple case - or it should be. But all clues point to the Toot Hansell Womenā€™s Institute, and Detective Inspector Adams is about to discover thereā€™s much more to the W.I. than bake sales and jam making.

Alice Martin, RAF Wing Commander (Ret.), and current chair of the W.I., knows the ladies of the Womenā€™s Institute are not guilty. But she has a bigger problem. Toot Hansell has a dragonish secret, and she needs to keep the police well away from it. And sheā€™d really rather not be arrested for murder. Again.

Meanwhile, Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly dragons and survivor of the days of knights and dragon hunts, knows even better than Alice that the modern dragon only survives as long as no one knows they exist. But he also knows friends donā€™t let friends face murder inquiries alone. Beaufort fully intends to Get Involved.

This investigation is about to take on dragonish proportions. Best put the kettle on.

I really wanted to like Kim M. Watt’sĀ Baking Bad, because the person who got it for me was super-enthusiastic, and that… might actually have been non-ideal on my part. I think if I’d read it in the right moment I’d have liked it more: it’s a bit of a cosy mystery, with a fantasy element (dragons), and it has a bunch of interesting female characters: the cop investigating the murder, the chair of the Women’s Institute who is a former RAF wing commander, and also Miriam, who is the closest with the town’s secret dragon friends.

Oh, and only the Women’s Institute know about the dragons, and most people can’t see them.

I found though that it felt a little bitĀ too cosy, deliberately positioning itself as such, while I was kinda going… “A guy was poisoned, you’re suspected of murder, one of the suspects is in your house right now having secretly entered it despite your police guard! This is not cosy, no matter how cutely your dragon doesn’t understand cloud computing!”

Aaand it didn’t help that the motive was weak, the murderer was obvious but also silly, and some chapters felt a bit like they needed a soundtrack of Yakety Sax.

Partly wrong timing for me, admittedly, but also I wasn’t really sold on the execution, alas. I’ll try more of Watt’s work, though, because I did enjoy the characters of Alice (the chair of the W.I.) and Beaufort (the leader of the dragons) — there is stuff here that I can see myself enjoying with a different plot.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Wages of Sin

Posted December 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Wages of Sin

The Wages of Sin

by Kaite Welsh

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 308
Series: Sarah Gilchrist #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Sarah Gilchrist has fled from London to Edinburgh in disgrace and is determined to become a doctor, despite the misgivings of her family and society. As part of the University of Edinburgh's first intake of female medical students, Sarah comes up against resistance from lecturers, her male contemporaries, and - perhaps worst of all - her fellow women, who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman...

When one of Sarah's patients turns up in the university dissecting room as a battered corpse, Sarah finds herself drawn into Edinburgh's dangerous underworld of bribery, brothels and body snatchers - and a confrontation with her own past.

Kaite Welsh’sĀ The Wages of Sin is historical fiction, set in Edinburgh with one of the first groups of women to study for a medical degree there. The main character, Sarah, is in disgrace — the only reason she’s been allowed this opportunity anyway, since otherwise she’d be married and in society — and rather an outcast even from her group of outcasts.

That means she has relatively little help/support when she realises that the body on her slab for dissection is actually a girl she met in the process of her volunteering work at a clinic for very poor people, and that she has been murdered. She then proceeds to poke her nose into everything, often very injudiciously, and makes some terrible assumptions and takes a bunch of stupid risks.

This is not to excuse her professor/potential love interest’s behaviour toward her, but she does literally accuse him of murder, so it’s not too surprising that he lashes out in return, threatening her with exposure.

All in all, I found it a pretty rough read, because Sarah was raped, and blamed for her own rape, and it also slowly becomes clear that she was subjected to medical abuse including forced sterilisation. It gives her a strong drive to help other women, and it all makesĀ sense, but it wasn’t pleasant reading and just isn’t really what I’m into when I read mysteries.

Definitely recommended for those who like something grittier and realistic, though.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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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,Ā 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 Bevanā€™s business vision ā€“ 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 Brandā€™s signature wit and ruthless twists.

I did end up finishing Christianna Brand’sĀ Death in High Heels, but goodness, there’s just something soĀ 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 wroteĀ 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 – The Book of Were-Wolves

Posted November 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Book of Were-Wolves

The Book of Were-Wolves: Were-Wolf History and Folklore

by Sabine Baring-Gould

Genres: Crime, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 142
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

First published in 1865, Sabine Baring-Gouldā€™s "The Book of Were-Wolves" is the first serious academic study and one of the finest ever done on the subject of lycanthropy and werewolf lore.
With the shocking histories of 10 famous cases, this classic blends science, superstition, and fiction to tell the full story of the were-wolves among us.

Not relegating the were-wolf just to a secular and sceptical study, nor simply to spiritual banter, Baring-Gould manages to compress an enormous span of historical material into his work; a work which is no doubt of value to the academic and those involved with the occult at the same time.

Sabine Baring-Gould’sĀ The Book of Were-Wolves was a bit of a random choice from the Serial Reader catalogue, solely because it was kinda apropos for spoopy season. Baring-Gould was an antiquarian and collector of folk lore, and this book is a collection of folklore about lycanthropy, along with some of his musings about where such stories may come from.

He dug into a bunch of texts for this, and I found his discussion of shape-changing (not always into wolves) in Norse mythology pretty interesting — I know the texts, but hadn’t really looked at them from that point of view before.

However, he also theorises about what gives rise to talk of lycanthropy, blaming mental illness, and starts discussing real-life cases of horrific murder, etc, etc. That bit gets a bit long and to my mind irrelevant, and doesn’t really have any conclusions.

Still, kinda interesting!

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’sĀ 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’tĀ quiteĀ 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 enjoyableĀ as a whole” would be my verdict, even without Berkeley’s misogyny.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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