Date with Death by Julia Chapman

April 08, 2017

The title of Julia Chapman’s debut mystery, Date with Death, doesn’t do it justice. Neither does the book jacket. The title and cover make it appear to be a cozy mystery. It is not. It’s a traditional mystery. It’s meaty with great characters....

Crimson Snow edited by Martin Edwards

February 04, 2017

Over on The Poisoned Pen’s blog, I’ve asked a small group of mystery authors to write about what they’re reading “In the Bleak Midwinter”. I just finished the perfect book for that theme, Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries, edited by...

The Haunted Season by G.M. Malliet

November 16, 2015

I’m a fan of all of G.M. Malliet’s Max Tudor mysteries. It’s a treat to read about an M15 agent turned vicar, living in a small English village. Even in a village, Max Tudor, like Miss Marple before him, discovers that people can kill. And, this...

Ghost to the Rescue by Carolyn Hart

October 05, 2015

Desperation. Why else would an emissary from Heaven be dispatched to earth except when someone is in desperate need? And, that’s really the only reason Chief Wiggins of the Department of Good Intentions would ever want to dispatch Bailey Ruth Raeburn. In Carolyn...

Plantation Shudders by Ellen Byron

August 19, 2015

The other day, a friend referred to her reading, and said sometimes nothing is as satisfying as “death and mayhem”. She’s right. And, when that death and mayhem happens in a debut mystery, a mystery in which I don’t guess the killer, there...