My Review (5 stars out of 5) Following a road accident, Inspector Max Mallery is keen to get back to his duties in Bordeaux, but a call from German-born Anna Hartmann throws him a curve ball. Not only is she Max’s ex-wife, but her husband Nicolas Lavigne (a former colleague of Max’s), has gone missing.…
Category: Cozy
‘After the Storm’ by Isabella Muir
NB This post first appeared on the Blog Tour for ‘After the Storm’, via Rachel at Rachel’s Rare Resources. My Review (4 stars out of 5) Giuseppe Bianchi’s intended short stay with relatives in Bexhill-on-Sea, turns into an extended holiday due to his reluctance to return home and the memories that haunt him there. While…
‘Sabine’ by AJ Griffiths-Jones
***** New Year’s Eve finds Max Mallery and his team celebrating, but the festivities are destined to come to a swift end the following day when a body is discovered at the Saint Margaux Vineyard. Unfortunately, Therese Bisset’s is not the only suspicious death – the apparent suicide of an engineer begins to look like…
‘The Moving Toyshop’ by Edmund Crispin
**** Poet Richard Cadogan sets off for a much-needed holiday to Oxford. Arriving late one night, he becomes intrigued to find the door of a toyshop unlocked. Snooping around, he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman. Before he can do anything else, someone bops him on the head. Informing the police, Cadogan is…
‘No Love Lost’ by Robert Crouch
***** When Kent Fisher interviews a young woman as a prospective new employee, he gets a bit of a surprise. But agreeing to help track down the woman’s mother, who abandoned her as a baby, he also sets in motion a series of dramatic events that could change his life forever. Aided by cop pal…
‘The Quality of Mercy’ by Malia Zaidi
**** Returning home to London, Lady Evelyn plans to start her own detective agency and having done so, soon finds herself with a dead body on her hands. With her forthcoming marriage to Daniel also on the cards, Lady E must also consider what she wants out of life. In the meantime, she has to…
‘Noel’ by AJ Griffiths-Jones
***** When a rain-drenched Dutch traveller hitches a lift to a rural French monastery, the monks take care of him. But when the young man dies, detectives Mallery and Hobbs launch an investigation and the monastery’s seventy inmates quickly fall under suspicion. The mystery deepens when the Dutchman’s grandmother arrives, as the old woman introduces…
‘The Rock’ by Robert Daws
**** Detective Sergeant Tamara Sullivan finds herself exiled to Gibraltar as punishment for disobeying orders during a police operation. Together with her new boss DCI Gus Broderick, Sullivan investigates the suspicious death of a police constable, leading to the discovery of a dark and sinister secret. This is the first adventure in the Sullivan…
‘Fog of Doubt’ by Christianna Brand
***** When Belgian paramour Raoul Vernet is found with his head bashed in on the night of a particularly dense fog, suspicion naturally falls on members of the house he was visiting at the time. While no-one appears to have been in the immediate vicinity when Vernet was killed, Inspector Charlesworth is certain someone in…
‘I May Kill You’ by Keith Dixon
When a series of mysterious, threatening notes are sent out to hundreds of apparently unconnected people, ex-cop Ben Buckland is shocked to learn his teenage daughter has also been targeted. Though no longer on the ‘force’ Ben seeks help from former colleague and old flame Serena, triggering bad memories. Focusing on the threat…
