During a cold snap in November, we chose ‘Winter’ as our reading theme for December, agreeing this could encompass anything from Scandi crime to a book that was set in winter, or just had a wintery-sounding title. And at our meeting just before Christmas, we chatted about seven novels we’d like to recommend – some wintery, others not. A couple of them earned 5 Stars and there’s nothing on the list that was awarded less than 3+. Better still, all them are available from Oundle Library or on BorrowBox, so we hope you’ll see something you might like to try.
Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife by Martin Edwards
If you enjoy puzzles, you’ll love this. Struggling author, Harry Crystal, accepts an invitation to spend Christmas in an isolated Yorkshire village owned by the Midwinter Trust, with the chance to win a serious amount of money if he solves a ‘murder mystery’ while there. He soon regrets his decision because the other five guests are as desperate to win the prize as he is and things are going to get very competitive. Inevitably, there’s a terrible storm and the village is cut off from the outside world and soon there are real dead bodies to deal with. The novel is interspersed with chapters containing clues for the reader to untangle and, at the end of a book, there’s a detailed list of every clue with its page reference. Mo said she loved this extra challenge as she was reading, although she was quite annoyed to see at the end how many of the clues she’d missed! 4+ Stars.
The Venetian Candidate by Philip Gwynne Jones
Nathan Sutherland, a freelance translator, is also the British Honorary Consul in Venice. As such he gets invited to some impressive events, and at a reception one evening meets two of the candidates running in Venice’s mayoral election. When Nathan is later asked to help locate a missing British tourist, who had been researching his grandfather’s fate during WW2, he travels to a remote Commonwealth war cemetery and discovers a body. Somehow it all links back to the electoral campaign and there’s a mystery to unravel. Cornish Eskimo said this was a nice whodunnit – easy to read and quietly amusing in places, although not light-hearted. Characters and locations are well-drawn and the mystery was interesting, although at its core it’s a tale of greed, corruption and politics. It earned 3+ Stars and the Eskimo is looking for more in this series.
The Cuckoo by Camilla Lackberg
This is a Patrik Hedstrom novel, set in Fjallbacka, Sweden, that was published in 2024. A famous photographer, Rolf Stenklo, is murdered in his gallery while a lot of his friends are attending a large party in the hotel next door. Then, two days later, three other people are killed on the private island belonging to the wealthy Bauer family. Patrik’s boss is acting oddly, so it’s up to him and his small team to deal with media and solve the case. Meanwhile, Patrik’s wife, a true-crime author, is in Stockholm researching for a book about an unsolved, decades-old murder which, eerily, has connections to Rolf. The novel is written in two timelines – present and past – and it’s an absorbing and intriguing plot that deals with abuse, prejudice and relationships. It’s been seven years since Camilla Lackberg wrote the last Hedstrom novel and Norfolk Gal was delighted to tell us this one was every bit as good as the previous books, and there’s a great twist at the end. 4 Stars.
The Black Friar by S.G. MacLean
January, 1655, and the body of a man, dressed in the robes of a Dominican friar, is found bricked up in London’s Blackfriars monastery. Damian Seeker, a captain in Oliver Cromwell’s guard, recognises the man as someone who had supposedly died and been buried in Delft a few years before, so why was he in London and what had happened? Seeker is told to investigate and his enquiries lead him into uncharted waters with Royalist plotters, tensions between the Army and Parliament, and children in the city going missing. Granny Weatherwax loved this, saying the historical setting was absolutely fascinating, about a period in history she knew very little about, and it was a gripping story with very believable characters. She gave it 5 Stars.
A Treachery of Spies by Manda Scott
Cornish Eskimo found this e-audiobook on BorrowBox and, at our meeting, praised it to the skies. The story begins with the discovery of the body of a very elderly woman in Orléans. She’s been shot dead in her car, expertly killed in the manner of the French Resistance in World War 2. To find those responsible, police inspector Inès Picaut has to look back to 1940s France and the story is told in two timelines. All the characters are beautifully drawn, from the present-day police team to the 1940s resistance fighters and SOE agents. The story builds slowly and at time it’s almost unbearably tense as you switch between the two storylines, but Manda Scott achieves a wonderful balance between past and present that keeps you hanging on every word. Desperately exciting, thought-provoking and moving, it earned 5 Stars.
The Red Shore by William Shaw
Met. detective Eden Driscoll is contacted by Devon police who tell him his sister, whom he has not seen for 15 years, is missing and that she has a son they need someone to look after. He travels to Teignmouth to try and discover what has happened and to meet his nephew, Finn. Despite not having seen his sister for so long, it feels completely out of character for her to go missing from a sailing boat, let alone abandon her son in a locked cabin … yet the local police seem very keen to explain everything as an accident. But if that is so, why is Finn then kidnapped from school and why are other odd things happening? Norfolk Gal has read and enjoyed other books by William Shaw and she said this didn’t disappoint. There were plenty of twists and turns that kept her reading and she felt sympathy with the characters and enjoyed their interactions. She finished her report by saying she’d been surprised at the ending when the mystery was finally resolved. 4 Stars.
The Christmas Clue by Nicola Upson
At just 170 pages this is a quick and easy read, but very enjoyable. Nicola Upson has woven a tale around the invention of the board game Cluedo, with the game’s real-life creators, Anthony and Elva Pratt as the protagonists. It’s Christmas Eve, 1943, and the Pratts arrive to run a murder mystery weekend at a hotel in the village of Rottingdean and stop at the village shop as they arrive, only to find the shopkeeper, Miss Silver, beaten to death. The police tell them to remain at the hotel while they investigate the killing but because it’s Christmas it’s obvious that not much progress will be made. The hotel manager is keen for the parlour game to continue but confesses that the actors they were promised haven’t been booked, so the Pratts will have to adapt and improvise their murder mystery. And somehow, it’s not long before their drama becomes closely intertwined with real-life events. Both MadDog and Cornish Eskimo read this and agreed it had something of a Radio 4 drama-vibe about it – a sort of modern-day telling of a Golden Age mystery. The story cracks along at a good pace and it was a lovely bit of escapism that earned 3+ Stars from each of them.
If you’d like to meet other crime fiction fans and chat about the books and authors you enjoy, why not come along to an Oundle Crime meeting? It’s relaxed and friendly, and anyone can drop in. Email join@friendsofoundlelibrary.org.uk and we’ll send you the details.