Purchased – Page 57 – Carol's Notebook

‘Twas the Knife Before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

December 14, 2018December 14, 2018 by Carol6 Comments

'Twas the Knife Before Christmas is a perfect cozy mystery for this time of year. It's Christmassy from beginning (the corpse being found in a candy dish of peppermints) to end (a Christmas Eve party at an inn that may or may not have been built by Santa Claus). Holly is our amateur sleuth. She works at her parents' tree farm where the annual Reindeer Games is underway. She's also the future innkeeper. Her parents are building an inn at the farm to help accommodate all the tourists that come to Mistletoe, Maine. Her friend Caroline is accused of murder, actually arrested, so she takes it upon herself to do some investigating, not trusting her maybe-boyfriend/sheriff to handle the job on his own. In her defense though, Evan, the sheriff, clearly has something else on his mind. It turns out his sister is in some trouble and is hiding out at his house. There were a lot of people in town who...

Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith

December 7, 2018December 4, 2018 by Carol3 Comments

Adrian Gray and his six adult children, along with a few spouses, are gathered at his country home for Christmas. I want to say "to celebrate Christmas," but I don't think they were ever really going to celebrate. They are not a nice group of people. Adrian is not a nice man himself. Then we have Richard, a politician who desperately wants a title, and his wife who may in face hate him. Olivia is married to Eustace (cue the anti-Semitism of the 1930s), a shady financier, his whole reputation is on the line if he doesn't manage to raise a substantial sum of money urgently. Brand ran off when he was young to be an artist, but is he's now working as a low-paid clerk and wants money so he can take off back to Paris to try to revive his career as a painter. His wife isn't at the house party, but she is a crass woman whose children are...

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

December 6, 2018November 14, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

I was looking for one last non-fiction book for the year to make it an even 12—a lot for me, and I've been in the mood for Christmas reading, if you haven't noticed from my last few posts. Which led me to The Man Who Invented Christmas. No, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas, but he did help re-popularize it and shape it as a holiday about family and charity and giving. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a point where he was almost flat-broke. He self-published the book, supervising everything from the illustrations to the printing. The story provides a lot of information about how books were published and marketed during the Victorian Era, along with how many were pirated and resold under various guises or made into plays without the author/publisher's consent. While A Christmas Carol didn't make him the money he had hoped, it did become a perennial favorite. It helped shape how we celebrate Christmas and the values we think...

A Christmas Tartan by Paige Shelton

December 5, 2018March 11, 2019 by Carol3 Comments

I've read all three full-length books in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and enjoyed them all. Delaney is someone I would like to be friends with. And the other folks in the bookstore, including the owner are fun to spend time with. The bookstore also has a backroom full of various interesting objects and it's often these that lead to the mysteries. In A Christmas Tartan, Delaney is given a box of things that includes a copy of A Christmas Carol with a photo inside. She of course is curious and the photo leads her to an elderly woman in town whose granddaughter is missing. This one is slightly more paranormal than most of the series. The present is connected to the past and to some extent, Delaney sees both, or maybe she doesn't. Either which way, the mystery of what happened to the girl is well-done and the solution made sense. The ending scene made me smile. It's a warm holiday...

Cherringham #4-6 by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards

November 1, 2018 by CarolNo Comments

I enjoyed this second collection of Cherringham novellas. Cherringham itself is a good setting, a typical small English town with its bar and bakery, its quirky townsfolk and always a murder or theft or something going on. Jack and Sarah make a good team. They are both smart and talented in their own ways. Jack is a former police detective and knows the ins and out of solving crimes. Questioning people comes naturally to Sarah and as at least a semi-local she knows a lot of people, she's also the one who does the computer research and occasional hacking. In "Thick as Thieves," a potentially valuable artifact is found on a farm. It is put in a retired professor's safe but is stolen over night. Sarah had been covering the story of the artifact for the town's paper and is of course curious. Her computer skills definitely come in helpful here, as do Jack's stake out abilities. I can't say I...

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh

October 25, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

I love mysteries, but if I had to narrow the genre down to my favorite type, I'd pick vintage mysteries. Even narrower, I'd go with country house mysteries, preferably at Christmastime, but winter will do. Death and the Dancing Footman is one of those. Our Inspector Roderick Alleyn doesn't show up until about 2/3rds through. Usually that annoys me, but Marsh tends to make it work. This time around, it gives us plenty of time to meet all of the guests. Jonathan Royal is the owner of the country house and the host of the house party. He is rather not a good person. He's invited a group of people who will quite clearly not get along well. The Compline family consists of the mother Sonia and her two sons, William who is excessively devoted and Nicholas, her favorite. William is engaged to another guest, Chloris Wynne, who used to be engaged to Nicholas. Sonia's friend, Hersey Amblington, who owns a spa and...