Library – Page 3 – Carol's Notebook

The Queen Who Came in from the Cold by S.J. Bennett

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 by Carol4 Comments

The Queen is travelling to Italy and one of her entourage witnesses a body dump while traveling on the train. Initially it is thought that the witness was drunk, but the more time that passes, the more they are realizing that it might have actually happened. The Queen, along with her assistant private secretary, Joan McGraw, decide they need to look into the case, maybe give the official investigation a nudge or two. This time around, as the title suggests, we get a little Cold War intrigue along with the murder mystery, While some of the household are reading James Bond thrillers, the Queen is dealing with her own potential international incident. I love the Queen in these books. She's a working woman, with an unusual job with unusual constraints, but still a job, in addition to being a wife, mother, daughter, sister. She's also a woman in a man's world, surrounded by people who try to protect her when...

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

January 20, 2026January 27, 2026 by Carol2 Comments

Our story opens with Mrs. Dolly Bantry being woken up by a maid and told there's a dead body in the library. She, in turn, wakes her husband, Colonel Arthur Bantry, who takes a bit of convincing before he will go down and check for himself. Sure enough, there's a dead girl in the library, a stranger wearing a rather cheap dancing dress. Mrs. Bantry immediately calls Ms. Marple and states if there has to be a murder in her house, she intends to enjoy it. The two women end up heading to a nearby hotel, where one of the staff has disappeared. I enjoy Miss Marple. She's so observant and maybe a bit cynical. She allows people who don't know her well, to believe she's just a harmless, quiet older village lady when she is really quite shrewd and intelligent. She sees everything and bides her time, asking seemingly innocent questions and making seemingly absurd comparisons until she has...

The Right Murder by Craig Rice

January 8, 2026January 8, 2026 by Carol1 Comment

The Right Murder was my last read of 2025, which worked well, since the book starts on New Years Eve. Defense lawyer John J. Malone is getting drunk in a bar - no surprise - and missing Jake Justus and Helene Brand, who are on their honeymoon. This is a direct follow-up to The Wrong Murder, in which Mona McClane bets Jake her Casino that she can murder someone in a public places and get away with it. In that book a murder is solved, but Mona was not the killer and she states that they had ‘followed the wrong corpse," so the question of who she killed is still hanging out there. Then a man staggers into the bar, calls for Malone, and falls down dead, stabbed - and we're off. I don't think I'm giving away anything the title doesn't by saying this time the murder is connected to Mona. Before Malone and Chicago Police Captain von Flanagan have...

The Wrong Murder by Craig Rice

January 7, 2026January 7, 2026 by Carol2 Comments

The Wrong Murder is another one that I finished at the end of December. I actually wanted to read #4 in the series, The Right Murder, which opens on New Year's Eve, but all the reviews said to read #3 first, which was the right choice. The Wrong Murder has a self-contained mystery, but it is also the set-up for The Right Murder - and I love those titles. This is also the first of Rice's book I've read. I don't know how I missed her. Jake Justus and Helene Brand have just gotten married and they are at a reception hosted by her father. Everyone is drinking - everyone is always drinking in these books. Jake runs into socialite Mona McClane and she ends up making what seems to be an absurd bet, but both she and Jake take it quite seriously. Mona bets that she can commit a murder in broad daylight with lots of witnesses and get...

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

January 6, 2026January 6, 2026 by Carol4 Comments

The Sittaford Mystery is a stand alone that doesn't feature and of Christie's usual characters. The book starts off with a party held in a stately manor in the middle of nowhere during a snow storm. The guests are an interesting mix and they decide to try table-turning, a way of contacting the spirits based on the movements of the table they are all sitting around. The table soon announces that the owner of the house, Captain Trevelyan, who is not present, has been murdered. Everyone assumes it is a joke in very bad taste, but Trevelyan's friend, Major Burnaby, decides he need to walk six miles in the snow to the house Trevelyan is renting, to check on him. Trevelyan has, of course, been murdered. We get a nice mix of amateur and official investigation here. Our amateur sleuth is Emily Trefusis, the fiancée of the man being held for the murder. She is determined and clever. She teams...

The Devil in Oxford by Jess Armstrong

December 22, 2025December 22, 2025 by Carol4 Comments

I love the Ruby Vaughan series. The 1920s setting, the characters, the touch of the paranormal, along with well plotted mysteries, keep me engrossed. This time around Ruby and her employer/father-figure, Mr. Owen, are spending the holidays in Oxford at a a meeting of antiquarians. In addition to her duties for Mr. Owen, Ruby is spending time catching up with an old friend, Leona. When local curiosity museum owner Julius Harker doesn’t show up for a planned presentation of Egyptian artifacts and is instead found murdered, Ruby gets pulled into the investigation. Leona, it seems, was close to both Harker and the man arrested for his murder, his business partner Herr Mueller. The mystery was good enough. We have several possible culprits, and since we didn't know a lot of these cast of side characters from the previous books, we don't know who to trust. Ruan is in town too, at Ruby's (written when drunk) invitation, but his support is of course...