An eyewitness to a murder calls the Pittsburgh police from one of the city’s 446 bridges, then disappears. To solve the case, the police must find the bridge. But where to start? Detective Branko Radic and Officer Kathleen Mulroy seek help from a nun, a professor, a mechanic, and a tattoo artist. They learn of a family feud, a business in trouble, some sketchy Harry Potter merchandise, and a missing young woman. If only they can find the right bridge, they might be able to put it all together.
But sometimes, a case is like a funhouse mirror at an amusement park. You have to adjust to the distortions in order to perceive the truth.
TOO MANY BRIDGES (A Radic & Mulroy Mystery Book #1) by Bill Gormley is an intriguing murder mystery/police procedural with an intricate plot full of twists and misdirection while also introducing the reader to a cast of new characters and Pittsburgh, PA. This is the first book in this series.
The Pittsburgh Homicide Department receives an anonymous call from an eyewitness who claims to have witnessed a murder and will only give their location as under one of Pittsburgh’s 446 bridges. With no other information, or even a body, Homicide Detective Branko Radic is given a short timeline to investigate if this is valid information. He is given the assistance of Officer Kathleen Mulroy, who is relatively new to the force and has a social services background and is familiar with the city’s homeless population.
The initial investigation goes nowhere until a body is discovered. When the victim is identified, Radic and Mulroy suddenly have multiple persons of interest and lines of inquiry, but they cannot locate two of their major suspects. A cat and mouse game ensues over the greater Pittsburgh area with everyone seeming to be two steps behind until each discovered bit of evidence adds up to the killer and his motives.
This is an engaging and intricately plotted first book in the Radic & Mulroy mystery series. The author seamlessly pulled me into the investigation with realistic characters and dialogue that develop fully as the story progresses. These are characters that left me wanting to follow them into future books. The crime mystery plot is a strong step-by-step police procedural with dead ends and discoveries that are not always straight forward. The pacing is balanced and leads to many twists and an interesting conclusion. The city of Pittsburgh, the surrounding area, and the many bridges throughout adds authenticity and atmosphere to the story.
I highly recommend this first crime mystery/police procedural in the Radic & Mulroy series and am looking forward to reading many more in this series.
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About the Author
Bill Gormley is a mystery writer, amateur jazz pianist, and retired educator. For 33 years, he was a Professor of Public Policy and Government at Georgetown University, where he wrote and taught about public policy, federalism, bureaucratic politics, and early childhood education. He also helped to found the university’s day care center, Hoya Kids.
Gormley’s non-fiction articles have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Public Administration Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Developmental Psychology, Science magazine, and elsewhere. His non-fiction books have been published by the Brookings Institution Press, the Princeton University Press, the Harvard University Press, and others.
Since retiring from Georgetown, Gormley has written two murder mysteries, both published by Level Best Books: Too Many Bridges (2024) and The Silent Trumpet (2025). His murder mysteries are police procedurals set in Pittsburgh, PA. A third mystery, Too Many Steps, will be published in 2026. Books may be ordered from the usual vendors.
In addition to his writing, Gormley produces a podcast, Profs on Cops, which is available through Spotify and Apple.
Dead in Three Two One by Peter James brings back beloved detective Roy Grace. All his stories have unexpected plot twists, sinister antagonists, and realistic plots. Most of this book takes place at the Royal Courteney Hotel.
One sub-plot has Dritan Dervishi, the cold-blooded consigliere for Albanian mob boss Roel Albazi, arriving with a beautiful woman on his arm and a lethal secret in his suitcase as he checks into the hotel. He has specifically requested Room 321, a room with a perfect view of the sea, and a deadly proximity to a target he’s been dreaming of for years.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is already pushed to the limit, coordinating the city’s massive security operation amid whispers of a potential terrorist attack. But the threat is more personal than he could ever imagine. Back in a prison cell, his old nemesis Albazi is counting down the seconds to a revenge that will not just take Roy’s life, but erase his entire bloodline. Roy and his wife Cleo prepare for a night of celebration at the Royal Courteney, but they have no idea that they are stepping into a deadly trap.
The secondary storyline has a long-term resident of the hotel who claims her family wants to kill her. Her son and daughter are angry because they think they have been cut from the will and see their mother spending all their inheritance.
This is a police procedural where the investigations are of a potential terror threat, a murder, and a potential killing. The hotel becomes a character in the book and readers learn about the goings on of a classy hotel.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Were you influenced for the story idea by Arthur Hailey’s novel,Hotel?
Peter James: I read Arthur Hailey’s novel Hotel in 1968. It was set in a grand old hotel in New Orleans, and the hotel was dilapidated and this elderly owner doesn’t want to spend any money on it. He’s got a young, ambitious manager and all the big hotel chains like Hilton are all circling like vultures. And it’s got all these characters in it. It’s got a career burglar who’s checked into a hotel, systematically robbing the rooms, and there’s an elderly aristocratic couple, who just killed somebody by a hit and run, and they’re hiding in the hotel. There is so much detail about the running of a hotel. After I’ve finished that book. I thought, so that is how a hotel works. And I was in awe and I thought, wow, you really must do a lot of research if you want to be a successful author. It always stuck in my head, and I decided one day I wanted to write a novel set in a hotel that had that kind of depth of research. So that was very much my starting point.
EC: There is a reference to Margaret Thatcher in the story, why?
PJ: One subplot was influenced when in 1984, the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, tried to murder Margaret Thatcher, who was then prime minister. A month before the Conservative Party conference, they knew Margaret Thatcher would be staying in her suite. A guy called Patrick McGee checked in the Grand Hotel with a timer bomb set to go off at 1:30 in the morning. And he specifically requested the suite that Margaret Thatcher will be staying in four weeks’ time. He planted the bond behind the bathroom and what saved her life was that she was a workaholic, and hadn’t gone to bed at 1:30 in the morning because she’s still working. But the bomb tragically killed six people, and badly injured many others.
I thought it’d be kind of fun to have somebody checking in the hotel. The book starts with describing this tall, handsome guy, in a smart suit, good haircut, a nice watch, and checked in at Brighton’s fabled Royal Courteney Hotel. He had his arm around a beautiful woman, a smile on his face, and a bomb in his suitcase. The reason this bomber is there is that he knows that Detective Roy Grace and his wife are going to be staying in the suite he wants to check into in exactly a week’s time. And he’s there acting on behalf of an Albanian gangster that Roy Grace put away who wants revenge on Roy.
EC: The other sub-plot?
PJ: I’ve always been fascinated by people who stay a long, long time in hotels who kind of make it their home. I asked three different hotel managers, ‘do you like having long stay residents?’ I figured they would. But they said no, they’re a bloody nuisance. And I said, ‘seriously, isn’t it good to have a steady income?’ They said, no. If you have a lot of those guests, then it means they can’t rent the whole hotel out to a company for a conference, which is very lucrative. They become a nuisance after a while, because what they do is they start to become priority proprietorial. And they’re quite disruptive. So, I thought it would be great fun to create a character, who is a long stay resident, whose husband died 15 years earlier, and she’s moved into the most expensive suite in the Royal Courteney Hotel, which is Brighton’s most fabulous seafront hotel. And we learn that she’s got a 50-year-old son, who’s had two failed businesses, and a daughter, who’s just gone through an acrimonious divorce and has not got very much money out of it. And they’re watching mummy burn through their inheritance. They enlist the help of a bent lawyer and a doctor to try to bring Mum’s death forward a few years.
EC: How would you describe the de Bairde family?
PJ: The mom is clearly a selfish lady who is pretty much uncaring, rude, and demanding. I think the son is just an angry person. He’s got his crappy little office, opposite a Porsche dealership, and he stares out his window day after day, looking at all the Porsches, and he’s really angry how life worked out, with his business systems failed, which means he can’t buy one of those lovely things that are tempting him, and his mummy won’t lend him the money to help bail the business out. His sister, Alex, is a spoiled bitch, who can’t accept the fact she’s being dumped by her husband and that she suddenly hasn’t got a means to live in the style which she believes she should be accustomed to. So, there are two angry people watching their mother, holding court, living in this grand luxury hotel, spending what they believe is their money.
EC: There is this book quote where Grace is upset about these criminals having juries declared not guilty as he investigates the murder done by the bomber. Can you explain?
PJ: You are referring to this quote, “While there were intelligent people on juries, there were occasionally some incredibly stupid ones too…Too often juries would be swayed, not by the facts, but by the defense-or-prosecution-counsel’s power of storytelling”. When I was on jury service, there was a case in which a father and son put up the marquis for a big motor show. And after they finished, they took all their workers out. They all got drunk. And then some got in a fight with one of the workers, punched someone in the face, broke his nose. blood everywhere. He’s now charged with causing assaults and bodily harm. The prosecuting council was laying out the case, and then we had a break, and we all went into the jury room. And one of the Tweety women on the jury said, ‘the man’s obviously guilty.’ I said, ‘excuse me, we haven’t even had the prosecution case fully laid out yet, and we haven’t heard from the defense. How can you say he’s guilty?’
EC: You like writing books about juries. One I really liked was titledFind Them Deadabout a woman forced to convince other jurors for a not guilty plea. Care to comment?
PJ: A key gangster has his men target her and a couple of other jurors to convince them that they should not return a guilty verdict.
EC: As long as we are speaking of previous books my absolute favorite wasLove You Dead. The main antagonist, Jodie Bentley was devious. Want to go down memory lane about this creepy book?
PJ: She was a black widow that used reptiles to poison and kill people. Jodie came about when I went to a prison. I am one of the charges of an ambassador of four for the reading agency. And we try to encourage people into reading and literacy generally. And I also do it for prisoners in English prisons, because the average reading age for 60% of the inmates is less than 11 years old. I was giving a talk in a women’s prison where all the inmates are lumped all together. So, you really don’t know if some of these are in there for a small offense or if they killed 10 people. Anyway, there’s this one woman in the audience. She’s about 55. And she keeps on interrupting me. She asked me smart questions about literature. She’s asked me about Dickens, Hemingway, and Fort. She’s got a very posh voice. And I’m wondering, trying to guess what she’s in for. Anyway, at the end, I get to mingle with the prisoners. So, I made a beeline for her. I said to her, ‘how much longer do you have to go?’ She responded, ‘Nine and a half more bloody years. And it’s just not fair. I asked, ‘What brought you in here?’ She replied, ‘I poisoned my mother-in-law, the old bag. The thing was, she went to the hospital to die. So, I cleaned out her bank account. And the bloody woman didn’t die? She came back home, so I realized she’s going to find out, so I thought I better poison her. And then I was afraid my husband would find out, so I thought I’d better poison him, too. And it’s just not fair. This woman did exactly what I did in London. She has only got six more years.’ Her husband was on life support for three months and he’s got permanent brain damage. And I thought you must be a character in a future book. And that is how Jodie came about.
EC: Is the Book Aid Ball charity for real?
PJ: It is one of Queen Camilla’s charges that she’s a patron of. So, I thought it’d be kind of fun that Cleo is giving a speech for that in the story. A quote by Camilla in the book, “Reading is exciting. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories-It’s like making new friends.” Or enemies, like Jodie.
EC: What about the antagonist of this story, Albazi?
PJ: He is a classic, completely immoral gangster. His background is that he was working for a Chinese triad group as a debt collector, and he defaulted. There are a lot of Albanian criminals in England. A lot of good Albanians too, but yeah, the Albanian crime fraternity has a particularly nasty way of operating, which is that, if someone is doing business with an Albanian criminal, like a drug deal and they don’t pay them their way of getting back will be to go to the grandmother back in Albania and kill her. They go for the family as their way of retribution. Albazi is an Albanian gangster, who has been living in England, and basically Roy Grace has put him away. And as a result, Albazi had several of his beloved close relatives in Albania murdered by a rival gang. He was angry, so he is out to get revenge. It was Roy’s estranged, and now dead wife, but that caused Albazi problems, and it was Roy that ultimately put him away.
EC: Next book?
PJ: I don’t know the title yet. We haven’t got it, but it’ll be out this time next year, and it’s all set on a cruise ship. I’ve done quite a lot of talks on cruise ships so I set this next book on one. Roy’s gone along for a holiday. I was on the Queen Mary some years back and I was on the bridge talking to the captain, and I said to him, ‘Have you ever had a murder on this ship?’ He said, ‘Not on this ship but 34 people a year disappear off cruise ships.’ I thought, ‘wow, that will make a good story. Nobody should sit on the balcony. Plop. Person overboard.’
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
DRAGON FIRES EVERYWHERE (Witchlore Book #4) by Hazel Beck is the last book in this quartet of paranormal/magical romances and the final battle for control between the Riverwood Coven and the Joywood Coven of witches. The romance focuses on Coven Historian, Georgiana “Georgie” Pendell and Azrael the dragon shifter from her dreams. I have enjoyed all the books and I recommend that the series is best read in order of publication.
Historian of the Riverwood Coven, Georgie Pendell, has always played her part, but she is beginning to feel like an outsider in her own life and group of friends. When she discovers her boyfriend cheating on her return from a trip, Georgie finds herself dismissing love as a fairytale. Depressed and mad, she sits by the dragon carved newel post in her home, and she reads aloud from an enchanted storybook which frees the dragon shifter, Azrael.
Georgie finds herself drawn to the dragon in ways she didn’t think were even possible. With his fiery golden gaze and arrogance, he claims Georgie as his own. While Georgie believes in books and the knowledge they possess, she finds it difficult to believe in herself, Azrael tries to teach her how special she is, but he is keeping a secret that could change both their destinies. Can Georgie discover what knowledge the Joywood Coven has hidden from the Riverwood Coven and all the town’s magical creatures to defeat their black magic once and for all?
I really enjoyed this entire series, but this last book especially. The world building is very well done in all. The paranormal characters; witches, animal familiars, ghosts, and non-magical town population all come together to make an entertaining read. The dialogue and emotions can go from serious, as they fight for their lives, to humorous close friend chatter. Georgie and Azrael are great protagonists as they continually grow throughout the story. The final battle between good and evil is great and brings all the characters together to a satisfying conclusion.
I highly recommend this engaging paranormal/magical romantic suspense book and series!
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About the Authors
Hazel Beck is the magical partnership of a river witch and an earth witch. Together they have collected two husbands, three familiars, two children, five degrees, and written 200+ books. As one, their books will delight with breathtaking magic, emotional romance, and stories of witches you won’t soon forget. Their four-book Witchlore series kicks off with SMALL TOWN, BIG MAGIC.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE LOST PHOTOGRAPH by Archana Maniar on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my mini book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a PICT giveaway. Enjoy and good luck!
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Book Description
A forgotten photograph. A trailblazing ancestor. And a modern woman about to discover that her family’s past holds the key to her future.
When overworked surgeon Jaanvi Chowdhury finds a mysterious photograph and a small stack of letters hidden in her Boston attic, she uncovers the remarkable story of her great-aunt Kalyani Joshi–one of the first Indian women to study medicine in 1920s London.
As Jaanvi pieces together her ancestor’s life, she discovers Kalyani’s experience of colonial oppression, her role in India’s fight for independence, and her unlikely connection with a Scottish missionary’s son, Alexander. Drawn together by their passion for literature, Kalyani and Alexander will risk everything for a free India, putting their loyalty, love, and choices to the test.
Navigating between past and present, Jaanvi confronts her own struggles. Passed over for promotion, she has lost sight of why she became a doctor. But as she learns how fiercely Kalyani fought for each opportunity–and the price she paid–Jaanvi begins to question her own carefully constructed life. Can her great-aunt’s unprecedented story help her reclaim not just her purpose in medicine but her sense of who she truly is?
Genre: Historical Fiction with Contemporary Themes Published by: Lake Union Publishing Publication Date: September 15, 2026 Number of Pages: 399 ISBN: 9781662528729 (ISBN10: 1662528728)
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My Mini Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
THE LOST PHOTOGRAPH by Archana Maniar is an engaging dual timeline story set both in the present following a talented female Indian heritage surgeon, Jaanvi, and in the late 1920s in India following her ancestor, Kalyani, and Scottish immigrant, Alexander. This is a story that conveys a compelling narrative about two women in society, past and present, and their struggles in both. While this is a dual timeline book, the story is told in three POVs.
Both the descriptive writing and historical research bring both timelines to life. They are also intertwined perfectly. My slight problem while reading this, and while I realize it was probably necessary, was the use of so many Indian words throughout which took me out of the flow of the story at times. That said though, this is a story that is rich in Indian culture and history that is worth working through the vocabulary. The romantic subplot between Kalyani and Alexander added to the stakes and tension in the historical timeline.
I recommend this story of two women’s struggles and triumphs in the times and societies they inhabit.
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Excerpt
Chapter 1
Jaanvi
Massachusetts, August 2019
If there was one thing that Jaanvi Chowdhury couldn’t endure these days, it was stillness. She had taken the week off to rest. On Saturday, she’d managed to sleep in until 6.30 a.m. On Sunday, she’d briefly reclined in a hammock with a novel. She had even gone for a massage and manicure on Monday. But by Tuesday, she was climbing the walls of her old Massachusetts colonial, desperate for something to do. Jaanvi took in a whiff of fumes from her so-called VOC free paint and sighed. Clearly, the concept of a staycation was lost on her.
Instead of relaxing, she had painted the whole house this week—Pewter Gray, Retro Mint, Secret Cove, and even the more risqué Berry Frappe. But as she glanced around the living room on Friday night, she realized that neither the new colors that graced her walls nor the smell of fresh paint that permeated her house evoked the sense of renewal that she had hoped for.
She’d planned the time off back in May, after a rough patch at work. As a general surgeon at a local community hospital, she had seen her patient load explode after a nearby hospital was shuttered. In her mid-career, she’d borne the brunt of the work—experienced enough to handle a variety of complex cases that her younger colleagues might shy away from, energetic enough to keep up with the demands of the operating room that older colleagues had grown weary of. But the workload left little spare time. Each day was an exercise in triage and damage control. Most of the time, she loved the adrenaline rush of handling surgical emergencies but increasingly, she felt as though something in her life was off. What it was she could not name. At one point, after a particularly grueling week dealing with gangrenous gall bladders and perforated colons, her
husband, Gautam, had suggested she take a week off. Take some time for yourself, he’d said. At that point, the staycation had seemed like a good idea.
Now, as she surveyed the room strewn as it was with canvas furniture covers, empty paint cans, varying sizes of excess baseboard, wads of used painter’s tape, and misshapen, half-dried paint trays, she wondered if it actually was. If anything, she’d be working later into the night tidying up after her painting misadventure than if she had just gone to work. She shook her head. What on Earth was she thinking?
She gathered several unwieldy pieces of extra baseboard and unsteadily made her way up the stairs to stow them in the attic. The floorboards creaked with familiarity under her feet, flooding her with memories of countless trips up into the cavernous storage space. Jaanvi had grown up in the very same house, here in Worcester, Massachusetts. She and Gautam had moved into the colonial with their twin sons, Akash and Varun, when her parents had relocated to a nearby retirement community. She loved the house, from its exacting symmetries and quaint dormer windows to its Shaker cabinets and ornate crown molding, to the ample backyard perfect for their golden retrievers, Mirchu and Meetu.
Still, as she made her way up the time-worn steps to the attic, she took pause. Long ago, during his Ouija board days, her brother Rakesh had been curious about the dusty place, convinced he’d make a fortune discovering some old treasure from the Revolutionary War days, perhaps with the help of a long-dead resident. Jaanvi, on the other hand, was certain he’d awakened phantasms bent on vengeance that continued to lurk among the rafters.
She balanced the baseboard in one hand and opened the diminutive attic door. Greeted to a burst of stale air, she ducked to enter. She switched on the hanging lightbulb, taking a quick look around the disheveled, crowded space, rife with creatures with more than four legs and God
only knew what else. Boxes were strewn in every direction, some stacked together in a seeming attempt at organization, others solitary and uncategorized. Making sure that the baseboard cleared the door, Jaanvi veered slightly to the right and navigated her way to the far side of the attic where she laid the material against the wall. She’d hardly been there for a few minutes, and the place was giving her the creeps. Eager to make an exit, she didn’t notice the stack of precariously perched boxes behind her, colliding squarely into them and losing her balance. As she tried to right herself, three boxes promptly slid off one another and crashed on to the floor. All manner of photographs, knick-knacks, baubles and trinkets came spilling out.
“Damned ataxia!” she muttered, cursing everything from her utter lack of coordination to her half-baked idea to paint the house to the unkempt nature of her attic, and then chiding herself for breaking her ten-day expletive-free streak.
She shook her head, surveying the mess. This would take forever to clean up. She had planned to have a full, home-cooked dinner ready for Gautam and the boys when they got home from Varun’s basketball game; instead, as usual, she’d barely have a pot of water boiling before they arrived. Some mother she was.
She crouched down and began to shove the wayward whatnots back into the boxes, still scolding herself. Initially, she gathered the photos from the floor without paying much mind to their provenance. Turning one of the images over so it was right side up, she realized she was holding a black-and-white photograph. It had to be old—very old—judging by its creased, yellowed edges. In the snapshot were three women, two white and one Indian. Their arms were locked around one another and they wore generous smiles, as if the image had been captured right after one of them had cracked a private joke. Jaanvi couldn’t help but smile as well. The friendship between them seemed to jump off the vintage photo paper.
She dropped to the floor into a seated position, dust bunnies scurrying from under her, painting project and dinner entirely forgotten, as she studied the Indian woman more closely. Jaanvi felt like she was looking at a replica of herself; the only distinguishing difference was that the woman in the photograph wore a diminutive golden ring in her nose and a bindi on her forehead. In the background Jaanvi noticed a bricks-and-mortar building bearing a sign that read “London School of Medicine for Women”. She looked at the back of the image and noted a scrawled inscription: “Kalyani, Emma and Elizabeth. London 1928”.
Jaanvi turned the photo over and stared again at her doppelgänger.
Kalyani? Could this be the same Kalyani she’d heard mentioned a few times over family get-togethers—the long-lost aunt that nobody in the family seemed to know much about? What was she doing posing in front of the London School of Medicine for Women?
Jaanvi shook her head. Honestly, she never paid much mind to the old Joshi family lore. She wasn’t sure how much of the stories to believe, and unlike the other laboriously detailed Joshi yarns, this one was rarely discussed and exceptionally vague. Jaanvi scratched her head. Was it possible that Kalyani had attended medical school in London back in 1928? Jaanvi would have assumed that women, especially Indian women, wouldn’t have been allowed to in those days, but here was photographic evidence of an entire school dedicated to women in pursuit of just that line of study.
She scrutinized the image again. There was something about the aesthetic, something about the vitality memorialized in the exposure that mesmerized her. She thought about the skill of the photographer who’d taken the snap. They’d not only considered the lighting, symmetry, and spacing but read the very mood of the moment. Then again, perhaps it was just a matter of luck. In the vacuous hush of the attic, a wave of nostalgia swept over Jaanvi. One of her
photography professors in college used to say just that. The most memorable photographs are usually a matter of serendipity.
That was a lifetime ago.
Brushing off her reminiscences, she glanced at the snapshot and then out of the dormer window. The summer sun was descending languidly, as if it were willing to give her the luxury of time for more discoveries. But Jaanvi had lost track of the hour. Mirchu and Meetu still needed to be fed, and then she had to get some semblance of dinner ready for the family.
She considered the remaining items lying spilled out across the floor and began placing them back into their boxes, her discovery encouraging her to handle the rest with more care. Standing up, she took stock of the mess of boxes around her, slid the photo into the oversized pocket of her flannel shirt, and made her way out of the attic. Apparently, there was more to the room than dust bunnies, six-legged creatures, and phantasms bent on revenge. Maybe tomorrow she’d ditch the dirty paint brushes and rollers and come back to explore the eerie alcove instead. Relief washed over Jaanvi. Finally, she had something else to do with her time off.
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Author Bio
Born near Chicago to immigrants from India, Archana Maniar relocated with her parents to Mumbai at age four. After the culture shock abated, she fell in love with her parents’ homeland until chance brought the family to California. During vacations and family occasions, Mumbai was a frequent destination. She attended college at University of California, Los Angeles where she studied political theory and biology before attending medical school at the University of California, Davis. As a professor of medicine and practicing infectious diseases physician, she was a frontline healthcare worker from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was deeply involved in health system pandemic preparedness. Always a writer in the margins of her day, storytelling became an obsession during her medical career, a way to process her observations about human nature during health, stress, and sickness. With a stubborn case of wanderlust, when she is not working or writing, she is usually traveling somewhere with her family. The Lost Photograph is her second novel.
Frances and George are looking forward to a Christmas season enlivened by all the diversions London can provide. But family comes first, and George’s sister Fiona and her husband persuade everyone to gather at their Norfolk estate for the holiday. The weather will be chilly, but the prospect of snow delights the youngsters. And with blazing fires and invigorating country walks in store, Frances envisions a peaceful, jolly Christmas.
Instead of a picturesque snowfall, however, Norfolk is hit by pounding rainfall and high winds. In the aftermath of the storm, Frances, Fiona, and the children make an unpleasant discovery in a nearby field—the body of their neighbor, dead in suspicious circumstances. Joshua Penhollow was the local doctor, though not a well-respected one. Indeed, most viewed him as a quack, and even his own stepdaughter held a grudge against him.
With the menfolk gone to help clear a blocked road, the investigation falls to Frances and Fiona, who must also curb the young people’s excitement at encountering a real-life murder. Combing through a village full of colorful characters and more than a few suspects, Frances feels any hope of a quiet Christmas slipping away. But more pressing is the need to stop a killer whose heart is as cold as the season . . .
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Elise’s Thoughts
A Christmas Guide to Family and Murder by Dianne Freeman is an entertaining story about a murder investigated by the main character Frances, her sister-in-law, Fiona and their three children.
The story begins with George’s sister Fiona and her husband, Robert, persuading the Hazelton clan to gather at their Norfolk estate for the holiday. The weather will be chilly, but the prospect of snow delights the youngsters.
Instead of a picturesque snowfall, however, Norfolk is hit by pounding rainfall and high winds. In the aftermath of the storm, Frances, Fiona, and the children make an unpleasant discovery in a nearby field: the body of their neighbor, dead in suspicious circumstances. The victim, Joshua Penhollow was the local doctor, though not well-respected or liked.
All the men of the family are called out of town to help with villages damaged by the storm. This leaves the investigation falling to Frances and Fiona, who must also curb the young children’s excitement at encountering a real-life murder.
The children, Rose, nine years old and her cousins, Grace and Gregory, nine and ten were assigned to write a Christmas story based on Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. The children were resolute in writing a murder mystery. In their story, Scrooge is the victim and the two detectives assigned to the case, named Frank and Georgianna, obviously inspired by George and Frances, solve the crime. They title it “A Christmas Murder” and are excited about the presence of the body in the house realizing they can help with the murder investigation. Frances is dismayed by the children’s enthusiasm for crime-solving at first, but realizes they have some good insight, especially since the village is full of an overabundance of suspects.
Intertwining the children’s writing of the story with the actual investigation makes for entertaining interludes. This Christmas story has plenty of family, secrets, and investigation. Readers wanting A Christmas Carol turned on its head involving a murder mystery will like this read.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Diane Freeman: It was kind of a roundabout way. This was the third book in the series. I’d known for a couple of years that I was going to be writing a Christmas story. And in my mind, I had an image of George and Frances, my main characters, out looking for Christmas greenery and stumbling over a body buried in the snow. But when it came down to writing it, I kind of ran into a problem with weather.
EC: What was the problem?
DF: At that point, we were in December of 1900, and it was the warmest December on record for the UK. And it was snowing, nowhere. Sometimes, it’s little facts like that that just trip you up. And hopefully you find them while you’re still in the planning phase, like I did. I just kept reading the weather reports and found on New Year’s Eve that year, there was a gale that hit the east coast of England and did a lot of damage. They ended up going out to the countryside in the county of Norfolk, and they were hit by the gale. And everything kind of followed from there. I just moved the gale up by ten days.
EC: How would you describe Frances?
DF: I think Frances is kind of an amalgam of all the heiresses, because I feel like they really had to be. She’s an American, and her family was new money. They came into money when Frances was about 10 years old. And they moved to New York, where she was raised not really learning how to do any practical things. Her mother raised her to eventually become a countess or a duchess or something of that nature, so she had art, music, and languages, and she knew the events of the day, and could carry on a good conversation. But she didn’t know how to make a cup of tea, or boil an egg or anything of that nature. So, when she became a widow, she was thrust into a whole new situation, especially since her husband has spent all the money. She is gutsy, adventurous, willing to give it a try, with her biggest character trait courage.
EC: George, her second husband, was hardly in it?
DF: The men were called away because streets were blocked by trees that were felled from the storm, gas works were broken, houses were flooded with the Norfolk coast itself kind of notorious for erosion. It’s been kind of weaning away, and houses do occasionally have to be moved back, because the coastline recedes. It made sense, that the men would have to leave, and I wanted a case where Frances would have to be on her own, because even the police were gone. Frances is my sleuth. And though she and George work together, I occasionally want readers to see that she’s grown. And I thought this was a good situation for that, even though the family and the kids helped her.
EC: The children did play a role in solving the mystery?
DF: The children wrote the Scrooge story centered around the murder. Only because if Scrooge had been murdered, really, would anybody miss him? And that was kind of the case with Dr. Penhallow. Nobody really liked him. Nobody. But nobody was crying over him. Nobody was really missing him. His wife, to some degree.
Frances would not have wanted them completely involved in the murder, and that was another reason. I had George and her brother-in-law Robert had to leave, because I didn’t want them taking the place of what things that the kids could be doing. They would be really excited to see what happened in a real investigation. So that was really the kind of reason for having them write that story, to get them involved. My initial first draft, I just kept pushing the kids aside, making them do something else. And I thought, ‘This isn’t working. This is a Christmas guide to family and murder. They must be involved in this.’ So, I scrapped that and started over. And the idea of having them write their own story and wanting to do some research worked well.
EC: How would you describe the children?
DF: I have no children, so they’re kind of how I remember being as a kid. Christmas is certainly exciting, but once they had a project that they are involved in, I think that kind of takes over everything. They’re inquisitive, they’re fun, and in the case of Gregory, kind of a little smart aleck. I just think they’re typical 9- and 10-year-olds from my past. In the book there is a quote, “Children think everything is a negotiation and a democracy.” I am pretty sure this is relevant to any parent.
EC: What was the role of Christmas?
DH: I wanted this to feel like a family book. To me, holidays are all about family, so even though there are some of them called away, and even though there’s a murder dropped in the middle of it, they kind of carry on.
EC: Is this a cozy mystery?
DF: I always think of it as a traditional mystery, but I think it follows some of the cozy rules. Most of anything gruesome is off the page. There’s no sex, no violence, nothing of that nature. And that tends to be a thing with cozies, which kind of puts a whole other definition to the word cozy, that the victim and the killer usually know each other. Sometimes it can be too cozy.
EC: Why the Victorian era?
DF: I read a book called To Mary a British Lord, and then I saw “Downton Abbey,” and I thought of Cora Crowley. I just thought it was fiction. And then when I realized this really happened. There was a quarterly publication called “Titled Americans,” that you could buy at a newsstand, kind of like online dating, but it would say, what titled gentlemen were available, what titles they held, what land they held, and if they had any money. So that the American family could figure out how to fill this Lord’s need, and then make a deal. Basically, trading money for titles was a big deal. The real heiress Consuelo Yznaga, The Duchess of Manchester, made money, helping other heiresses find their feet once they got into England. This just fascinated me, and I thought to myself, what would this be like 10 years after the wedding? She was quite an amazing woman.
EC: How would you describe Frances’ sister-in-law, Fiona?
DF: Fiona is the perfect best friend. I wish she were my best friend. She’s fun loving. If you saw her from the outside, you would think she was frivolous. But she really is clever, and she somehow manages to be the person people confide in. So, she tends to know people’s secrets, but she doesn’t tend to divulge them. She’s a very loyal, good friend, and like I said, I wish she was mine.
EC: Next book?
DF: It takes place in March 1901 right after Queen Victoria’s death. The title is A Royal Guide to Secrets and Murder. It’s going to be a fall book of 2027.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace after her daughter’s best friend was abducted from the playground right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer turned insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.
But once inside the abandoned castle, her dream job becomes a nightmare when the motley crew of investigators discovers a dead body in the basement and Mannie starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the mansion, she begins to suspect that Stone Mad’s sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced that girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted house at an alarming rate for more than a century.
Twist follows twist, like the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle, as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion’s secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter’s missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all … or become the next chapter in its haunted story.
STONE MAD by D.M. Pulley is an atmospheric horror/thriller featuring a haunted historic Cleveland Gilded Age mansion, called Stone Mad, and the architectural engineer, Mannie Wallace, who is hired to evaluate it. With stories of decades of paranormal hauntings, madness and death, and missing young girls, can Mannie survive Stone Mad?
Mannie Wallace’s life fell apart on the day her daughter’s best friend disappeared on a trip to the beach under her supervision. Six years later, after a breakdown, a divorce, and moving with her two children to her grandparents’ old home in Cleveland Hts., Mannie is trying to get her life and reputation back on track. Mannie receives a call from an eccentric developer who wants a survey of the mysterious Stone Mad mansion to turn it into a boutique hotel. This is just the chance she needs.
As Mannie works in the mansion, she discovers hidden stairs and spaces in walls, as well as room measurements that do not add up. Mannie also begins to see ghosts of young girls who all remind her of her daughter’s missing friend and is worried she may be having another breakdown, but then a real girl is discovered dead in the basement. Mannie’s true crime obsessed daughter believes young girls have gone missing from around the mansion for more than a century. When she and her friend go on their own to investigate, they disappear, and Mannie is now in a race to discover all the secrets of Stone Mad once and for all.
This story would be a good horror/thriller read at any time of the year, but it has all the spook factor and chills you really want for the Halloween season. Mannie is a complicated protagonist who you can find difficult to like, but you also can feel empathy for her. The story has flashback chapters at the beginning of each section that give the reader more history of the mansion and the girls who disappeared. While I felt the beginning dragged a bit, it continued to pick up speed as more of the history and the present came together to a gripping climax. I love this author’s books and how they pull from actual locations in my hometown, not just the historic buildings, but also the restaurants and neighborhoods. The story also includes many interesting architectural facts, as well as historical facts.
I recommend this eerie horror/thriller that keeps you guessing while you are on the edge of reality, sanity, and the paranormal.
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About the Author
D.M. Pulley lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband, two children and dog, Hobo. Before becoming an Amazon bestselling author, Pulley worked as a Professional Engineer rehabbing historic structures and assessing building failures. Her survey of a vacant building in Cleveland, Ohio inspired her debut, THE DEAD KEY, the winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Since then, Pulley has published four more novels inspired by true crime and real buildings, and she has sold over 800,000 books worldwide. Her thriller NO ONE’S HOME was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award and named one of the “Best of Horror” by Suspense Magazine The abandoned buildings, haunted houses, and buried past of the Rust Belt continue to inspire her work. Her latest Gothic thriller, STONE MAD, is the story of a haunted house, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.
