Miss Austen Investigates the Hapless Milliner by Jessica Bull This is the first (released in February of this year) in the Miss Austen Investigates series. You should know, Gentle Reader, that I used to carry my tatty paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice with me on every overseas field expedition, and I carried it along to my senior honors thesis in England as well. Yes, I am a great fan of Jane Austen. Some of the modern books featuring g her or taking off where she ended her stories have been mediocre, some have been ok, and some have been pretty good. I'd put the Hapless Milliner in the pretty good category. Jane is torn when the book opens because her beloved sister and bosom companion, Cassandra, is away, and Jane is missing her sister dearly. But at the same time, she is enthralled because of a forbidden romance with a suitor she knows her family would find unacceptable. The book opens with Jane attending a ball, where she steals away for a romantic tryst with Tom, but her rapturous evening is ruined when a murdered woman is found in a closet by Jane's brother. Then, another brother is accused of the murder, and Jane realizes that if she does not identify who the real murderer is, her brother will be hanged for a murder he didn't commit. I enjoyed the murder and the story--Ms. Bull does a good job of recreating late 18th/early 19th century England, and the social restrictions that Jane had to conform to. Jane's reflections on her investigations, as revealed in her letters to Cassandra, allow us to be inside Jane's investigations and sleuth along with her. Recommended. (NetGalley)
A Deadly Walk in Devon by Nicholas George This is another great first entry in a new series, a Walk Through England Mystery series. I love walks and long rambles and hikes, I love England, and so the book would have had to be dreadful for me to pan it. Luckily, it was very enjoyable. Rick "Chase" Chasen, a retired American policeman, has joined his friend Billie for a walking tour of Devon. Chase is starting to emerge from the intense grief of the past year, after the death of his husband, and he and Billie are both hoping that a long walking tour will help him recalibrate a new normal alone. Their companions on the walking tour are stereotypes: the loud crass businessman and his trophy wife, the bickering couple, the brother and sister who are so different and yet so alike. But despite these conventional characters, Mr. George does a good job of throwing some twists into each of their stories to fool the reader. When one of the walkers is murdered on a foggy, treacherous cliffside trail, the local policeman, unfamiliar with murder investigations, asks Chase for his help. I enjoyed this book a lot. I loved the setting, Chase is an interesting character and a good eye for the reader to witness the murder and the investigation through. I just wish we had seen a bit more of Billie, because she's a great character. I'm assuming she may be the main suspect in a future book. I just wonder how well the author can sustain a series where someone gets murdered every time Chase goes on a hike? Recommended. (NetGalley)
The Dog Sitter Detective Takes the Lead by Antony Johnston This is the second in a new-to-me series. Since I do a lot of pet sitting as my side hustle, I had to read this ARC when I can across it. And in general I liked it, but I had one big problem with the main character. At first, I though, finally, a main character who is 60, single, childless, but not an old maid, retired and depressed. Finally, a mature woman resuming her career after some years spent as a caregiver, who is not ashamed of her colorful past bu who has learned some very valuable lessons, who is still very much adventurous and eager for new experiences. I thought I'd love Gwinny. And I liked her, until she spend her first night dog sitting poking into her client's home, hacking into his computer on Avery flimsy pretense. Seriously, a need to film herself reciting her very few lines for the local play? Gwinny is a retired actress making a comeback; this should have been easy for her. And even if I by that excuse, her first instinct is not to film herself on her phone but to break into her client's computer and use his sophisticated recoding equipment? I know she undertakes that action because the author needed that plot device in the story, but I thought of a much better and more clever and natural way for that same information to come Ginny's way that did not involve her doing some very illegal hacking. As a dog and cat sitter myself, if I did that at a client's house, my career in pet sitting would be over. I hated the cavalier way that was treated. And unfortunately, that tainted my enjoyment of the book. I will read another, because I like the premise of the series a lot, but if Gwinny continues to engage in questionable behavior like this, I'll be sorely disappointed. Recommended but not as wholeheartedly as the other books this month. (Net Galley)
