Tag: #cozyhistoricalmystery

Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: The Queen Who Came In From the Cold by S.J. Bennett

Book Description

1961, England.
The Queen is spending a night on board the royal train with her entourage and her sister, Princess Margaret. But before they reach their destination, an unreliable witness claims to have seen a brutal murder from one of the carriages.

The Queen and her assistant private secretary, Joan McGraw, get to work on their second joint investigation. No one else saw the crime. If there is a victim, could he be the missing photographer friend of Margaret’s new husband, Tony Armstrong Jones?

This time, the Cold War threatens to undermine the Queen’s upcoming visit to Italy. She and Joan must tackle dark forces that follow them all the way, in a tale of spies, lies, and treachery.

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Elise’s Thoughts

The Queen Who Came in From the Cold by S. J. Bennett features Queen Elizabeth II as the protagonist and her private secretary Joan McGraw. Fans of Peter James, who’s latest The Hawk Is Dead, involves the current Queen Camilla and King Charles might also like to read this story.

This plot has Queen Elizabeth II and her personal secretary Joan involved with spies, lies, and treachery involving the KGB. The Queen, Prince Philip, and Princess Margaret are planning on taking the royal yacht to Italy.  But the temporary lady-in-waiting claims she saw through the train window a dead man being tossed into a lake. The Queen and Joan decide to investigate. They discover a plot to smuggle a Russian defector aboard the Britannia while the Queen and Prince Philip are visiting Italy.

This is a cozy mystery that has intrigue and humor along with historical figures that readers get to know better.

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Author Interview

Elise Cooper: Idea for the series?

S. J. Bennett: I was shifting from writing children’s books to crime.  My father was in the army and spent a lot of time with the Queen. I ended up thinking she would make a great detective because of her curiosity about people.  She had access to any expert. I decided to write a series where Queen Elizabeth II is the detective behind the scenes and lets someone else take the credit, a man who is her nemesis.

EC: Idea for this book?

SJB: This is the fifth one in the series, all written to be read as a stand-alone. I went back in time to 1961, the height of the Cold War and the Space Race.  It was all very dangerous and a great time to set a mystery novel.  This book starts on the royal train.  An unreliable witness thinks she saw something from the train window. Later, I move to the royal yacht, the Britannia.  This one is a story of spies with the Queen caught up in international intrigue and takes on the KGB.

EC: Did the title come from the James Bond movie?

SJB: John le Carre wrote The Spy Who Came in From the Cold that came out in 1963.  His first book came out in 1961 and in the final pages of this book I have Prince Philip reading the book by a new author.  He cannot remember the name but indeed it was John le Carre. I also have some characters reading James Bond books.  President Kennedy enjoyed reading Ian Fleming so I had Prince Philip keen to read Fleming so he can chat with him when he comes over.

EC:  How would you describe Queen Elizabeth II?

SJB:  She was intelligent, funny, witty, curious, very warm and self-contained. She was an empathetic person.

EC: How did you get the dialogue for the Queen?

SJB: She did not talk that much conversationally in public and did not give interviews.  My parents did meet her but overall, I had to imagine it.  There was a time period to get her voice right. What I did do is watch old videos of the family and saw the little asides, like when she made a joke to someone. In the early books of the series I imagined her and Philip as an older couple.

EC: How would you describe Joan, the Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary?

SJB: She is an outsider who is not part of the Royal machine and has not grown up within the Royal family. She is a working-class person. She grew up in the 1930s and enjoyed working crossword puzzles with her father.  She was recruited to Bletchley Park to be a code breaker. She gave a lot and was hugely instrumental in helping us win WWII.  When it was over the code breaking effort was ignored and her contribution to it was also ignored. She found herself in the typing pool at Buckingham Palace. The Queen found her there.  Joan has a great memory, is a linguist, and keeps a secret. She is curious, no nonsense, analytical, and courageous.

EC:  Was she based on anyone?

SJB: My grandmother. She was clever, hardworking, and multitalented. She was largely underestimated growing up in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

EC: Since the story is based on historical figures what do you want readers to get out of the story?

SJB: Of course, entertainment.  But also, a sense of reassurance. The world we live in is stressful. My books allow readers to retreat for a bit. I write in the Golden Age tradition where the Queen sets the tone of being moral, serious, with a sense of justice. I like to live in a world where the people in charge are like that.

EC: The next book?

SJB: The next book is set in 1966. It is titled Deck on The Royal Yacht and will be published in October 2026. It was a big year for Britian.  We had the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and was popular. The Queen has set off on a five-week tour of the Caribbean. The plot has somebody who has helped Joan out in the private office found dead of a drug overdose. Joan is a suspect because she does not like this woman very much.

THANK YOU!!

***

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.

Feature Post and Book Review: Not They Who Soar by Amanda Flower

Book Review

Summer 1904. Katharine and her best friend from Oberlin College, Margaret Goodwin Meacham, are thrilled to attend the St. Louis Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, for the centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Not only is it a grand, international event, it’s also the first time the young women have seen each other in quite a while, and they are giddy with excitement—despite warnings from Katharine’s old family friend, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to be careful of the fair’s less seemly side.

Undaunted, the girls have a lovely time—until the exposition turns from a girls’ trip to a misadventure when Katharine stumbles upon a woman in distress. It’s obvious that she has been attacked. Katharine does her best to save her, but tragically, before help can arrive, the woman dies. Yet just before her last breath, she utters the words aeronautics competition. . . . Katharine’s brothers Wilbur and Orville were asked to enter the competition with their successful 1903 flyer but declined. Katharine wonders how this young woman could be connected to such a prestigious event.

Now, unable to get the woman’s face out of her mind, Katharine convinces Margaret to join her investigation—and it’s soon clear that the race to be declared the first in flight might just be the deadliest competition of them all.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218155554-not-they-who-soar?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=PnPTkqviH0&rank=1

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My Book Review

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

NOT THEY WHO SOAR (Katherine Wright Mystery Book #2) by Amanda Flower is the cozy historical amateur mystery I have been waiting for and is the second book in this smart series. Katharine Wright, the youngest sibling of the legendary Wright Brothers, is back and once again places herself in the middle of a murder investigation. This book is easily read as a standalone mystery, but the first book, To Slip the Bonds of Earth, is also an excellent read.

It is the summer of 1904, and Katharine has taken the train to meet her best friend from college, Margaret, to attend the St. Louis Exposition. While her brothers turned down the opportunity to share their flying machine at this event, she is still interested in seeing the aeronautics competition which has a hundred-thousand-dollar first prize. As they check out the hangers for the flying machines, Katharine stumbles upon a woman who has been fatally stabbed.

Even as Katharine and Margaret take in the many sights of the World Fair, Katharine cannot stop wondering who the young woman was who was killed and why. Katharine discovers the young woman was a mechanic interested in flight and everything seems ties back to the aeronautics competition. Can Katharine sort through all the evidence and suspects before she becomes a victim also?

I am very excited to see this series is going to continue. Katharine is an intelligent, inquisitive protagonist who while she may seem over-shadowed by her brothers’ notoriety, she is not intimidated by it and is a woman ahead of her time. This story took her out of Dayton and was full of interesting facts, both good and disturbing, regarding the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis which also hosted the Olympics at the same time. Ms. Flower’s descriptive writing of attractions at the fair demonstrated her extensive research for this story. Katharine’s intricately plotted mystery investigation is full of red herring, surprises, and multiple suspects which kept me guessing and turning the pages all the way to the end.

I highly recommend this cozy historical amateur mystery featuring Katharine Wright and am looking forward to many more in this series!

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About the Author

Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over thirty-five mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times, and she had been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. She currently writes for Penguin-Random House (Berkley), Kensington, Hallmark Publishing, Crooked Lane Books, and Sourcebooks. In addition to being a writer, she was a librarian for fifteen years. Today, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their two adorable cats.

Social Media Links

Website: http://www.amandaflower.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoramandaflower

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/not-they-who-soar-a-katharine-wright-mystery-book-2-by-amanda-flower

Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld and Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance by Catherine Lloyd

Book Descriptions and Elise’s Thoughts

Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld by Catherine Lloyd is a great cozy historical mystery. Set in the 1830s, it features Miss Caroline Morton, daughter of a disgraced Earl, now gainfully employed as a lady’s companion. Lady Caroline is happy to be employed by Mrs. Frogerton, who is interested in spiritualist gatherings at the home of Madam Lavinia and begs Caroline to come along. As Caroline tries to discern whether the spiritualist’s powers are real, a much darker mystery presents itself: Madam Lavinia is found lifeless in her chair, a half-empty glass of port at her elbow. In her desk is a note addressed to Caroline, entreating her to find her murderer.

Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance continues where the previous book left off. The previous story had Miss Caroline receiving an urgent invitation from a London law firm to discuss her late father’s estate. After all, the dishonored Earl of Morton died without a pound sterling to pass on to his two daughters. Caroline meets with a cagey lawyer, Mr. Smith, who shares life-altering news that the Earl composed a second will, leaving behind an undisclosed fortune. Mrs. Frogerton, however, is thoroughly unimpressed with the firm’s conduct and suspicious of their true motives. Her instinct proves right when the two ladies find the office ransacked, staff in turmoil, and Mr. Smith missing. The full weight of the situation doesn’t sink in until Mr. Smith dies following a brutal attack on the street. He had an empty envelope bearing Caroline’s name in his pocket. Further complicating matters is the amorous Mr. DeBloom, who claims his mother goaded the Earl into making bad investments and promises to link Caroline to her inheritance. She also must contend with the disappearance of Susan, her younger sister. As Caroline unwittingly becomes the center of both a criminal case and a sordid love triangle, she must tread with caution while seeking the truth.

These books have an appealing historical mystery with characters that are well-developed, and a plot that keeps readers captivated from start to finish. The historical backdrop is seamlessly woven into the narrative. Readers will anxiously await until the next books come out.

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Author Interview

Elise Cooper:  How did you get the idea for the story regarding Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld?

CL: I do a lot of general reading and somehow got onto hypnotism and celebrated mesmerists in the 19th century.  I thought Mrs. Frogerton would be the perfect person to fall for a con and that Caroline would be completely against it, which led to an excellent bit of conflict to add to the mystery from the start.

EC:  Does this story show the unfairness of the justice system and how some detectives have tunnel vision?

CL: As a British person I’m always fascinated by the nuances of class, and I always explore the inequalities in my books. Back in the 19th century the lines were drawn even more firmly on how someone was treated by the authorities, which depended very much on their status with the aristocracy.  Many times, an aristocrat could literally get away with murder. I also love a detective deciding who has committed the crime and then doggedly pursuing that belief despite all the evidence pointing otherwise. And to be fair, the suspect doesn’t help by refusing to cooperate and generally makes things worse for himself.

EC:  How did you get the idea for the story regarding Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance? Was it based on a Pyramid Scheme?

CL: I didn’t think of it as a pyramid scheme. I was more interested in what someone will do to protect sensitive information about themselves coming to light. How much are they prepared to pay, and at what point do they break? I was also interested in the blackmailer’s perspective and how they target their victims. I’m always fascinated by credulous people.

EC: How would you describe Mrs. Frogerton?

CL: Tenacious, caring, protective, uses her wealth toward good. I would also add shrewd right up front because she’s nobody’s fool. She’s very aware of how the world Caroline comes from views her, but refuses to be cowed by their attitude, which I love. I think she’s also a little credulous, loves a good piece of gossip, and is more than willing to lead the way into dangerous waters.

EC:  How has the relationship between Mrs. Frogerton and Caroline changed over the years?

CL: It’s become less polite. Mrs. Frogerton treats Caroline like family, and it’s taken Caroline a while to understand it. Caroline has learned to trust that her employer has her back. Caroline’s so used to being let down by those around her that it takes a lot for her to open up about her feelings but she’s beginning to see Mrs. Frogerton as her friend and perhaps as a mentor.

EC: How would you describe Caroline?

CL: She’s definitely loyal to those she cares about. She’s cynical because life has been decidedly unfair to her. I don’t see her as particularly out for justice in the purest sense, but she does have a dogged determination to expose the truth, especially when those that she loves are in danger. I see her as someone who is doing her best to move forward in a world that has changed dramatically for her.

EC:  Do you think Caroline has grown as a character since the first book and if so, how?

CL: Yes, she definitely has grown. At first, she could be a little passive aggressive and unwilling to trust others or truly show her feelings. I think Mrs. Frogerton has helped her regain her confidence and shown her that women can be successful in more than one role. She’s definitely learned to put her foot down on occasion and she’s not so internally angry.

EC:  How would you describe Dr. Harris?

CL: Honest, direct, arrogant, stubborn, with contempt for society He’s something of a rebel who regularly puts his foot in it especially with Caroline.

EC: What was the role of the father’s will in both books?

CL: It’s one of those themes that drives the action in both books. From learning that her father has left her and Susan, her sister, with nothing. From stealing their doweries and legacies of their mother, to finding out that he might have written a new will with intriguing possibilities is one of the continuing stories woven into the series. Caroline’s very reluctant to get involved with anything regarding her father. Even the thought that he’s reaching out from beyond the grave to possibly humiliate her again is terrifying. She almost can’t bear to hope.

EC: Is there a love triangle or actually a love quadrilateral in the book between Mr. DeBloom, Samuel, Dr. Harris, Inspector Ross?

CL: I don’t see it like that. To me it’s more of a study about how a beautiful woman attracts attention whether she wants it or not. It’s also a commentary on how Caroline is perceived as the lowly paid companion who no longer deserves the respect she was accustomed to when she was Lady Caroline.

EC: What is the relationship between each and Caroline?

CL: Mr. DeBloom sees her as a beautiful trophy and perhaps as a way to annoy his mother rather than as her real self.

CL: Samuel, Mrs. Frogerton’s son, is initially wary of her influence on his mother but comes to realize Caroline is a real person and learns to appreciate more than her beauty.

CL: Dr. Harris doesn’t want to like Caroline as much as he does, and he struggles with how to deal with that. They act more like brother and sister and Caroline likes being able to be herself with him. He also has a terrible tendency to shoot himself in the foot.

CL: Inspector Ross perhaps understands her better than anyone else as he’s taken a similar path outside his own narrow aristocratic world. Even though he is aware that she is beautiful, he also treats her as an equal, which I think Caroline appreciates.

EC:  What is the relationship between Caroline and Susan?

CL: Caroline has spent her whole life shielding Susan from the realities of their parents’ bad marriage and their father’s indifference. In her efforts to be independent and provide a home for herself and Susan she’s had to leave Susan with relatives. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Susan doesn’t appreciate this and ends up bonding with her cousin with predictable results. Nothing Caroline does is right in Susan’s eyes, and she is far too amenable to the machinations of her cousin Mabel.

EC: How would you describe Mabel?

CL: Lacks a moral conscious, callous, self-centered, a liar, instigator, and dislikes Caroline. Like most people with personality disorders, she’s supremely comfortable in her own superiority. She’s willing to sacrifice anything and anybody to get what she wants.

EC:  Did you try to enhance the plot with the great banter between the characters using their interaction with Caroline?

CL: I just love writing great dialogue.  I think it works very well in mysteries to stop the plot getting bogged down AND it’s much easier for readers to miss clues that are cloaked in banter than in narrative text.

EC: Next book(s)

CL: Miss Morton And the Missing Heir 2025

THANK YOU!!

***

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.

Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: Murder at the Elms and Murder at Vinland by Alyssa Maxwell

Book Description

In Murder at the Elms one of the wealthy families, the Berwinds, invite those high in society to view their newly completed Bellevue Avenue estate. It is a modern mansion, that has been wired for electricity, generated by coal from Berwinds own mines. Yet, days before the party the servants go on strike, hoping to negotiate better working conditions since they work seven days a week with no time off.  They are all fired and replaced with new staff. At the party there is fine dining and music but the evening ends tragically when a chambermaid is found dead in the coal tunnel and a guest’s diamond necklace is missing.  Because Emma and Derrick were there, they are asked by the police to help in uncovering who is the murderer and what is the connection between the necklace and the murder.

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Book Description

Murder At Vinland is the most recent book in the series. Vinland is the Viking themed home of Florence Vanderbilt Twombly.  There she is having a fundraiser for the local Audubon Society attended by the wife of Theodore Roosevelt and Harriet Hemingway. The following morning one of the guests is found to have been poisoned. However, more poisoned desserts are sent to socially prominent women who had attended the luncheon, and tension increases even as the dangerous toxin used is identified. Asked her to help to find the person sending the poisons is Emma’s good friend, police detective James Whyte. Emma and Jesse must sort through possible motives because now more than the birds are in danger.

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Elise’s Thoughts

Each of Murder at the Elms and Murder at Vinland by Alyssa Maxwell intertwines a mystery within an historical novel. The setting is the turn of the century Newport where during the Gilded Age there is vast income and a power disparity. The main character, Emma Cross, is the “poor Vanderbilt” having inherited some money from the famous family. But she is an anomaly because she is independent and a working journalist who owns the newspaper The Newport Messenger along with her wealthy husband, Derrick.

Maxwell brings turn-of-the-century Newport to life by taking readers into the mansions and how the wealthy lived. Combining mystery with real-life personalities and events from the Gilded Age makes for an entertaining and informative read.

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Author Interview

Elise Cooper: What about the TV series?

Alyssa Maxwell: It is not a TV series.  Hallmark Mystery made the first book, Murder at the Breakers into a movie. We do not know if any new ones will be made.  They do tend to move a little slowly.  I have no say in anything.

EC: Why make your heroine, Emma, a woman journalist in the early 1900s?

AM: She is independent.  It is unusual, not the norm, but not out of the question.  There were other female journalists at that time and other women in other occupations. They did have their own business and made their own money. I always refer to Nellie Bly as the inspiration for Emma, a Gilded Age journalist who took a lot of risks. At the beginning of the series as a society journalist she was able to get into the balls and the wealthy activities in Newport. Now she is more of an investigative reporter. Jesse, her detective friend, relies on her insight because she knows the wealthy and the ordinary Newport people. 

EC:  Has Emma changed since she married?

AM: She has come to see there is still strength in depending on others. In the beginning she tended to be a lone wolf, that in accepting help there might be strings.  With her husband, Derrick, she realizes it is possible to be a team.  She is more confidant in herself and her relationships.

EC: Since Emma is pregnant will that jump the shark?

AM: Emma needed to settle into her married life and in the early 1900s that would include having a child. Nanny and Katie will help in looking after the baby as well as having her work from home. I think it is a natural progression of her life.

EC: Will Jesse ever get a love interest?

AM: I have hinted in an earlier book that Jesse and one of the maids of a mansion had met and were striking up a friendship. I need to get back to it, but have not since I have been so focused on Emma and Derrick’s relationship

EC: What would you say is the historical part of Murder at The Elms?

AM:  The mystery and the historical wrap around each other in all my books. I do take some historical events and wrap them around the mystery. There was some backstabbing, with societal climbing but there was also female friendships and relationships that I explore. There is also yellow journalism with the sensationalism and embellishment. One of the journalists, Brown, uses it.  He did not care how his reporting might affect someone. He did not have a lot of scruples as evidenced when he covered the striking of the servants. At that time there actually was a service strike at the Elms where everyone was fired.

EC:  In Murder at Vinland how did you get the idea for the story?

AM: This house has a Nordic and Viking design, which led me into thinking of nature. The archived newspapers of the period showed how Audubon Societies were springing up.

EC:  How would you describe The Ladies of the 400?

AM: Many were smart, savvy women who if allowed would have been CEOs of companies. They were frustrated in their lack of choices.  This is why being on the top of society was so important to them, being like their business.  They could be set in their ways because their choices were limited, so they felt other women’s choices should be limited as well. They can be good and bad.  They were involved in altruistic projects and are philanthropists. They helped their communities but at the same time there was rivalry about who would be considered the most important one in society.

EC: What was the role of Jennie?

AM: She wanted to start up an Audubon Society.  She was passionate about the protection of birds.  At the time women were wearing hats adorned with feathers. She gets angry with these women and because of this Emma suspects her. By the 1920s, feathers on hats were out because of the efforts of the consciousness and education, but at the time of the story this was in the beginning.  I put in two historical figures, Harriet Hemingway who established the Massachusetts Audubon Society and Edith Roosevelt because of her husband’s activism in preserving the environment.  I thought they would be likely figures to attend a luncheon on the dangers to birds.

EC: Next books?

AM: In the book that I am finishing now, the next Newport mystery there are fewer suspects than this book. The book is titled Murder at Arleigh, coming out this time next year. A societal couple believed to be madly in love has a wrench thrown when the wife comes to Emma and tells her she thinks her husband is trying to kill her. The couple is real, Harry and Elizabeth Lehr. Two Weddings and a Murder will be my next book in the “A Lady & Lady’s Maid” series. It begins with a marriage and that same day the chief inspector is murdered, coming out in February.

THANK YOU!!

***

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.

ARC Feature Post and Book Review: To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower

Book Description

December 1903: While Wilbur and Orville Wright’s flying machine is quite literally taking off in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina with its historic fifty-seven second flight, their sister Katharine is back home in Dayton, Ohio, running the bicycle shop, teaching Latin, and looking after the family. A Latin teacher and suffragette, Katharine is fiercely independent, intellectual, and the only Wright sibling to finish college. But at twenty-nine, she’s frustrated by the gender inequality in academia and is looking for a new challenge. She never suspects it will be sleuthing…

Returning home to Dayton, Wilbur and Orville accept an invitation to a friend’s party. Nervous about leaving their as-yet-unpatented flyer plans unattended, Orville decides to bring them to the festivities . . . where they are stolen right out from under his nose. As always, it’s Katharine’s job to problem solve—and in this case, crime-solve.

As she sets out to uncover the thief among their circle of friends, Katharine soon gets more than she bargained for: She finds her number one suspect dead with a letter opener lodged in his chest. It seems the patent is the least of her brothers’ worries. They have a far more earthbound concern—prison. Now Katharine will have to keep her feet on the ground and put all her skills to work to make sure Wilbur and Orville are free to fly another day.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181037562-to-slip-the-bonds-of-earth?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=mIsgS8Umhv&rank=1

Expected Publication: March 26, 2024

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My Book Review

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

TO SLIP THE BONDS OF EARTH (Katharine Wright Mystery Series Book #1) by Amanda Flower is the perfect mash-up of biographical fiction and cozy mystery featuring an overshadowed and forgotten sister finally being recognized for her strengths and accomplishments and weaving into the facts of her life a smartly plotted cozy murder mystery. This is the first book in the series, and I am thoroughly hooked.

Katharine Wright is a brilliant scholar, teacher, and suffragette who also runs the family household of her reverend father since the death of her mother at the age of fifteen. Besides all these personal accomplishments, she also assists her brothers, Wilbur and Orville, with their books in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. While disappointed when she is passed over for a head teaching promotion, she is very excited by a telegram received from her brothers in North Carolina stating that they have flown their motorized flying machine.

When the brothers return for the Christmas holidays, Katharine talks Orville into attending a Christmas party given by the head of the PTA. Orville’s coat goes missing and when the siblings find it, it is in the billiards room with a dead man stabbed with a screwdriver. One of Katharine’s students is in the room with blood all over his shirt and the design papers for their flying machine Orville had in his coat pocket are missing. Katharine’s student is arrested, but Katharine is not satisfied with the detective’s conclusions.

Katharine begins asking questions that lead to the prominent men of Dayton having secrets that are worthy of blackmail, but do they lead to murder? And the flying machine design papers are still missing, could they be worth killing over?

I loved this story for so many different reasons. I knew nothing about Katharine and was happy to be introduced to a strong, independent, educated woman who was so accomplished in a time when it was not common. She lends herself to being a perfect protagonist in a mystery plot with her curiosity and tenacity. The depth of research into Katharine’s life, the Wright family, and all the history of the period is evident and intertwined seamlessly throughout the book. The cozy mystery plot has all the red herrings and twists that keep the reader guessing, and it gives believable resolutions to all questions by the end.

I highly recommend this engaging historical cozy mystery and I cannot wait for more mysteries to follow in this series.

***

About the Author

Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over thirty-five mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times, and she had been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. She currently writes for Penguin-Random House (Berkley), Kensington, Hallmark Publishing, Crooked Lane Books, and Sourcebooks. In addition to being a writer, she was a librarian for fifteen years. Today, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their two adorable cats.

Social Media Links

Website: http://www.amandaflower.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoramandaflower/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aflowerwriter

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amanda-flower

Book Review: Murder by Invitation Only by Colleen Cambridge

My Book Review

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

MURDER BY INVITATION ONLY (Phyllida Bright Mystery Book #3) by Colleen Cambridge is another charming and entertaining addition to the Phyllida Bright historical cozy mystery series featuring Agatha Christie’s murder mystery solving housekeeper. While this is the third book in the series, it can be read as a standalone for the mystery, but each book gives a little more information and teasers regarding Phyllida’s mysterious past.

 While Agatha Christie and her husband are away in London, Phyllida receives an invitation sent to Mallowan Hall for a murder from the new inhabitants of Beecham House. How can she resist?

Mr. and Mrs. Wokesley have set up a murder mystery play with friends and family playing the suspects. When the scene is revealed all the invited guests are invited to question the suspects from the scene. As the questioning begins, one invited guest gets closer to the body of the murder victim and discovers that he is not acting. Mr. Wokesley is dead.

Phyllida takes control of the investigation while Inspector Cork is delayed in his travels from London. She soon discovers that all the play-acting suspects all truly have reasons to kill Mr. Wokesley. When a second murder occurs, Phyllida may have discovered the killer, but at what price to her own life?

I really enjoyed this engaging return to Mallowan Hall. Phyllida is a wonderful protagonist/amateur sleuth and with every book her mysterious past and aversion to London makes her even more intriguing. This mystery plot is set up like Christie’s own mysteries and cozies of that era. While I enjoyed reading this story due to my love of these characters, the murder mystery is very easily solved. The reasons for all the suspects to have hated and or murdered the dead man were interesting, but never really pulled me away from my early belief of the true murderer. That will not stop me from continuing in this series though. I cannot wait to learn more about Phyllida’s past and see if she and Bradford become even closer.

I enjoyed this return to Phyllida’s historical cozy mystery world and I am anxiously waiting for the next book in the series.

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About the Author

Colleen Cambridge is the pen name for an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. From a young age, Colleen has loved reading mysteries and now she couldn’t be happier that she is able to write them.

Under several pseudonyms, she has written more than 36 books in a variety of genres and is always plotting her next murder—er, book.

Social Media Links

Website: https://www.colleengleason.com/colleen-cambridge/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColleenGleason.Author

Twitter: https://twitter.com/colleengleason

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/colleen-gleason