Daily Archives: May 26, 2013

by

Lucy Arlington: Buried in a Book

 

 

Just finished Buried in a Book by Lucy Arlington, first in the Novel Idea Mystery series.  The book features a very charming setting, a bohemian life style type of community.  The protagonist, Lila, her mother and son have an interesting dynamic.  A love interest is introduced in this first book as well.  I’m sure that will be expanded upon in future books.

The mystery was well done with some pretty good red herrings (I thought I knew the killer but I was wrong).  I did like that Lila is a woman starting over in her forties.  This makes her a character easy for me to relate to.  I enjoyed the books many literary references and quotes, I found it an engaging feature of the book.  I also liked a glimpse into the life of a literary agent.    I already have the next book Every Trick in the Book and I will read that soon.

by

Showcase Sunday

 

 

Visited my new favorite bookshop on Saturday:  Booktrader  of Hamilton.

Picked up the following:

135430599656651 1302993 13187058 454953 1302993 356943 8857

 

Pretty good haul of cozies.  I just have to go through the Mrs. Malory series to see the order of the books.  I already read the MC Beaton book but one of my book clubs is reading it for June so I will reread.    Happy reading everyone!

by

Hazel Holt: Mrs. Mallory Investigates

This is a new cozy mystery series, new to me i should say. First interesting thing is that the protagonist’s name is spelled differently on the cover of the edition I have than everywhere else in the series. On the cover it is Mallory and inside the book and for the rest of the series it is Malory. Just weird, maybe an American versus English difference, I don’t know. Anyhow, on to the rest of the book.

Traditional British cozy village mystery with a middle aged (50s) widowed protagonist. I really liked the book the mystery was engaging, the main character was interesting and likable, and the rest of the cast was nicely rounded out. I did solve the mystery prior to the resolution but that was okay.. it was not too terribly early on and it did not take away from my enjoyment of the book.

I am definitely going to read more in this series. It is everything that i like in a cozy mystery. Love the village setting and the animal components…..cats and dogs and horses, oh my! I would say that if you are a fan of MC Beaton, Simon Brett, Ann Purser, Veronica Heley, etc. you will enjoy this. I would say that if those writers are 4s, this book was a 3 – 3.5, however it was the first in the series and in my experience they get better after the first book.