Truss faithfully re-creates both the ingenious appeal and the formulaic limitations of golden-age puzzlers.
Truss' third stroll down Memory Lane offers firm evidence that 1957 Brighton is packed with homicides.
In the space of one eventful evening, three locals—Barbara Ashley, the runner-up in the local Milk Board's Lactic Lovelies beauty contest; Andrew Inman of the Automobile Association; and Cedric Carbody, a celebrity contestant on the BBC radio show What’s Your Game?—are bashed and sliced to death with milk bottles. Sgt. Jim Brunswick, who’d looked forward to dating Barbara that very evening, is properly outraged; Inspector Geoffrey Steine, now that he’s finished his own brief stint on What’s Your Game? is mostly focused on the ice-cream sundae competition he’ll be judging; and Palmeira Groynes, the police station’s observant and efficient charlady, is preoccupied with the summit meeting of crime lords she’s arranging for her ex-lover Terence Chambers. So it falls mainly to Constable Peregrine Twitten to figure out what the victims had in common that would make someone attack them with such a bizarrely unlikely weapon. Guided partly by the very different clues he picks up from Mrs. Groynes, who nobody else believes is a master criminal, and Milk Girl Pandora Holden, who had eyes for him years ago, and partly by his cocksure sense of his own abilities, but never by any sense of decorum that would lead him to filter his monstrously tactless remarks to others, Twitten presses on as the body count rises to impossible heights before he finally identifies a killer who’s both unguessable and, well, unnoticeable.
Truss faithfully re-creates both the ingenious appeal and the formulaic limitations of golden-age puzzlers.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-597-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Part Bridgerton and part Monk, Gray’s latest has something for everyone.
A pair of unlikely sleuths face yet another murder in Regency England.
Born more than a century too early to be formally diagnosed, Jonathan Darcy, the son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, has all the hallmarks of autism spectrum disorder: dislike of noise and crowds, discomfort with social interactions, avoidance of eye contact. Fortunately, his family’s wealth and prominence keep his neurodivergence from damaging his value on the 19th-century marriage market. When his parents arrange an invitation for Jonathan to stay in London with Sir Thomas Bertram’s family while they tend to his injured brother, a bevy of eligible young ladies are eager to meet him at this season’s round of balls. Jonathan, however, is fixated on Miss Juliet Tilney of Gloucestershire, a young woman of superior intellect who has collaborated with the perceptive Jonathan in solving several crimes. His frustration at being parted from Miss Tilney subsides temporarily when she too is brought unwillingly to the city by a parent hoping to find her a marriage partner. But not even a murder in Sir Thomas’ surprisingly chaotic household enables the pair to cement their relationship. Their investigation into the death of Sir Thomas’ disgraced sister Maria’s former husband, freely sanctioned by the overburdened London police, permits them frequent contact, but objections from both sets of parents prevent them from declaring their affection. Their latest adventure joins a whodunit to an exploration of what it takes to make a family, as the two quirky young mutual admirers struggle to create a lasting bond.
Part Bridgerton and part Monk, Gray’s latest has something for everyone.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593686607
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
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