My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
MURDER AT MALLOWAN HALL (Phyllida Bright Mystery Book #1) by Colleen Cambridge is a clever and entertaining start to a new historical cozy mystery series with the housekeeper as an amateur sleuth set in the fictional manor home of Agatha Christie and her second husband, Max Mallowan.
Phyllida Bright previously worked with Mrs. Christie during WW1 where she was a nurse, while Mrs. Christie worked in the pharmacy. She was hired under not completely explained and slightly mysterious circumstances. Phyllida has a close friendship with Agatha, and she rules over the household staff with a strict adherence to decorum, but also with fairness, even as she deals with a supercilious butler who is curious to know more about her background.
Phyllida has yet to meet a gentleman she admires in real life as much as Agatha’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot. When she finds a dead body of one of the current house guests on the floor in the library, she is determined to follow in her favorite detective’s footsteps and solve the case. When a member of the household staff is killed next, Phyllida knows the killer is close at hand and she must work quickly before her own story ends abruptly.
I enjoyed this cozy mystery and found it to be a charming homage to Agatha Christie’s own mysteries. Phyllida is an amateur sleuth worth following and I am especially interested in finding out why she is trying so hard to keep her birth date and past a mystery from others and why she is so accepting of mores that others, in this time period, would find appalling. I loved that Phyllida got her denouement at the end of the story just as a fictional sleuth would in a written mystery. All the secondary characters in the household and their jobs were interesting to learn about and I will be looking forward to how Phyllida and Bradford, the chauffeur get on in future books. There are plenty of red-herrings and plot twists to keep the cozy mystery reader turning the pages.
A good start to this cozy historical mystery series, loved the intrepid Phyllida, and I am looking forward to more mysteries in this series.
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Author Bio
Colleen Cambridge is the pen name of an award-winning USA Today and New York Times bestselling author.
Under several pseudonyms, she has written more than 36 books in a variety of genres and is always plotting her next murder—er, book.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this. I do love that old typewriter on the cover!
Me, too.