Summertime Guests
by Wendy Francis
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Wendy Francis centers her latest at the recently restored and reopened (fictional) Seafarer hotel in Boston, with its impressive history of important guests and air of glamour making it a destination for special occasions and events. The novel follows a handful of customers who intersect one fateful afternoon, and presents through flashbacks the stories of how they arrived at that moment. When a woman falls (or does she jump?) to her death from her room’s balcony on to the restaurant patio, her story ends, and the stories of the other players begin to unfold. Jean-Paul is a French expatriate juggling the management of the hotel and life as a new father. Riley is a bride-to-be attending a tasting as she, her fiance, and his mother consider wedding venues. Claire is a recent widow hoping to reconnect with the one who got away. Jason is a troubled grad student on a weekend getaway with his girlfriend. Who is the dead woman, and what happened? This engaging tale maintains a pleasant level of suspense throughout, and a satisfying conclusion of the mystery that will still leave readers with some things to think about.
Add this to your arsenal of beach reads along with Elin Hilderbrand, Nancy Thayer, and Dorothea Benton Frank.
Reviewed by Alene
Tagged: Boston, Cozy mystery, Detectives, Mystery
Urn Burial
by Kerry Greenwood
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An English country house mystery, but set in the Australian countryside in the 1920s. Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher, a woman of independent means and modern attitudes, detects the solution to a number of mysteries involving her hosts and fellow guests including a servant’s murder. Fans of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter should give this series a try.
Reviewed by Linda
Tagged: 1920s, Australia, Cozy mystery, Mystery
Wicked Autumn: A Max Tudor Novel
by G. M. Mailliet
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First in a new series, this book is an homage to the traditional English village mystery. Max Tudor is the village priest, settling into his peaceful existence in the peaceful village of Nether Monkslip – a far cry from his previous life as an MI5 agent. Wanda Batton-Smythe is the self-styled head of the village, and head of the Nether Monkslip Women’s Institute, organizing the fall Harvest Fayre, and creating ill-feelings and enemies in her wake. She had no close friends, but did anyone really hate her enough to kill her? Max Tudor finds himself in the middle of the investigation, and we can look forward to visiting the other villages that he is also responsible for in future books. I believe that this is the type of mystery that provides all the clues for you to be able to figure out the culprit, although I was just happy to go along for the ride.
Two things that endeared this book to me from the (near) beginning:
- Cast of Characters list (when I was writing my great mystery novel as a preteen, this was as far as I got)
- Wanda is reading a Booker-prize winner, and says, “In no year, in fact, had she enjoyed reading any of the Booker winners, but she felt honor-bound to read them, and to drop into conversation the fact that she was reading them.” I read this before the short list for the Booker prize came out this year, and was surprised that were actually several books that I am interested in reading, including The Sisters Brothers.
Reviewed by Molly
Tagged: Cozy mystery, Fiction, Mystery
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
by Alexander McCall Smith
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In the latest installment of the popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Mma Grace Makutsi gets married, Mma Precious Ramotswe deals with a complicated case of attacks on a farmer’s cattle, and the tiny white van takes on a metaphysical dimension. McCall Smith’s characters handle the large and small dilemmas of life with a realistic mix of (mostly) good intentions and human vulnerability. His prose is charming and the loving portrait of Botswana, always in the background, makes you want to go there.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Africa, Cozy mystery, Fiction, Mystery
