I didn't love Murders in the Marquee. The setting had potential, a fancy hotel in San Francisco in the early 1900s. The ducks, who paraded through the lobby on a daily basis, were cute. The rest of the book was kind of dumb. Our three amateur sleuths, Kitty, a hotel guest, Saul, the man who takes care of the ducks, and Henry, the elevator boy, were an unlikely team, given the era and Kitty's social class. Kitty herself is a bit annoying. Her clearly well-off and all she does is whine. I never really cared about Saul or Henry and felt like their personalities were rather superficial.
The mystery was slow. All the clues added up in the end, but they're doled out one at a time and it's like the three have to deal with each clue before they're allowed to have the next.
I will say I didn't pay attention to who the publisher was. This would definitely fall...
I've read a couple of the previous Bibliophile Mysteries and enjoyed them well enough, so since I'm a sucker for Christmas cozy, I picked up The Twelve Books of Christmas. This time around Brooklyn gets a call on Christmas Eve from her good friend Claire, who is in Scotland. Claire is preparing to marry Cameron, a castle laird, on New Year's Day and wants Brooklyn and Derek to be there. So the couple, along with Brooklyn's parents, fly to Scotland. Claire also hopes that while she's there Brooklyn will help solve a mystery- a dozen Christmas-related books, some quite valuable, have gone missing from the castle library.
Of course, there's trouble. Most of the women in town, including the castle's new librarian, seem to be anti-Claire. Then, Brooklyn and Derek find a dead body in one of the castle's closets. They, of course, have to investigate the murder in addition to the missing books - which may or may not be...
I don't know where to start with The Villa. We have two storylines and the narrative jumps back and forth. In 1974, five people stayed at the villa. Two women came out of it with career-defining works. One man was killed. In the present day, Chess and Emily are spending the summer at the villa, each working on her next book. Emily becomes interested in the events from 1974 and starts researching and piecing together that story.
The parallels between the 70s and the present day become clearer as the novel progresses. Friendships are tested. Tempers boil over. Secrets are revealed. Both storylines grabbed my attention. The book slowly leads up to the defining moments, moments that are both inevitable and shocking. I honestly didn't like any of the characters though, in either time. While the women especially, were strong and bold, they were also manipulative and did more damage to each other than the men in their lives did.
I...
