Tag: Female heroine

Death of an Ex

Life and its secrets can be messy. Delia Pitts captures every nuanced layer of private investigator Vandy Myrick’s in Death of an Ex.

This second book of the Vandy Myrick mysteries finds Vandy visiting her mother’s and her daughter Monica’s graves, after receiving a settlement check from those held responsible for Monica’s death, three years earlier.

After running into her ex and his son at a banquet later that night, Vandy finds out the next morning Phil’s been murdered just blocks from her home after an intimate reunion, sending her on a mission to find the killer and the truth about who Monica’s father really was.

Full of heart, sometimes heavy, Pitts’ crisp first-person writing brings readers on an emotional roller coaster, with a gripping whodunnit. While I didn’t like everything Vandy did, Pitts’ masterful prose ensured I understood her.

I highly recommend Death of an Ex, just out in paperback, as a dramatic mystery perfect for a beach read. I received an advanced reader copy of Death of an Ex from St. Martins Press/Minotaur Books, courtesy of NetGalley.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

The Case of the Christie Conspiracy wins Agatha Award

Kudos to Kelly Oliver and The Case of the Christie Conspiracy for a well-deserved Agatha Award. After all, it doesn’t get much cozier than a murder mystery with the legendary Golden Era detection club as suspects.

A murder of a fellow author is followed by Dame Agatha’s much speculated upon disappearance, making her a prime suspect. Eliza Baker, secretary to club president Dorothy Sayers, is not so sure and she and the group’s newest member, Theo, set out to investigate.

Oliver does a brilliant job of setting the stage and bringing readers along on a fabulous mystery in true Christie style. I also loved the perfectly-balanced tension and rivalry between the two amateur detectives.

I highly recommend The Case of the Christie Conspiracy to cozy mystery lovers and Agatha Christie devotees. You’ll love it!

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

Blown away by Tangles

I was absolutely blown away by Tangles, Kay Smith-Blum’s compelling debut novel, winner of 13 well-deserved literary awards.

Set in Hanford Washington, where two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium was produced as part of the Manhattan Project, now a major clean-up site, Smith-Blum masterfully weaves a tale of riveting historical fiction, romance and mystery – one full of palpable emotion – courage, fear, determination, hope and love.

Told through the eyes of a brave secretary and a young scientist, this stunning Cold War home-front tale reveals the devastating costs of the birth of the nuclear age, and celebrates the quiet courage of wronged women, the fierce determination of fatherless sons, and the limitless power of the individual.

It’s a story that doesn’t leave you. I have laid awake at night thinking about it and how everyone needs to read Tangles. Knowledge is power.

I highly recommend Tangles for historical fiction, romance, mystery, and thriller fans. I received a copy of the book, courtesy of the author. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

It’s not nice to use Santa as a weapon

Bestselling author Geri Krotow had me hooked from Ralph the watch parrot’s first squawk on the first page of her A Santa Stabbing, the first installment of her Shop ‘Round the World mystery series.

After traveling the globe, retired Navy pilot, Angel Warren, is excited to start the next chapter of her life in Stonebridge, Pennsylvania, close to family and reconnect with old friends. The widow and recent empty nester with twin girls off at college in opposite ends of the state is just weeks away from opening her Shop ‘Round the World, travel-themed gift shop when she discovers the body of an old classmate in her storeroom, stabbed with a broken Santa figurine from her shop. Despite the fact another old friend is now her hometown’s chief of police, Angel is the prime suspect.

She’s been away from Stonebridge for a long time. So even when she’s eliminated from suspicion, the town’s gossip mill continues to spread rumors she killed the cut-throat real estate agent. With her reputation and the success of her shop on the line, Angel sets out to find the real killer before she becomes the next victim.

I love Krotow’s easy style and humor, getting to know her rich characters, with plenty of suspects and plot twists and a possible romance with Nate the handsome and artistic barista — that is if he’s not the murderer. I look forward to reading future installments.

I ho-ho-highly recommend A Santa Stabbing to lovers of traditional mysteries, cozy mysteries, and Christmas cozies and look forward to reading future installments of the series.
Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

Juniper Blume is back

What’s not to love in Daphne Silver’s The Tell-Tale Homicide? A rare books librarian/amateur sleuth, who loves to dress in vintage chic, a murder that could be somehow connected to Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention she drives a blue roadster just like my favorite girl detective.

The follow-up to Silver’s Agatha Award-winning Crime and Parchment, this second installment in the Rare Books Mystery series finds Juniper Blume back in Rose Mallow on the first day of her dream job at the Calverton Foundation, overseeing the town’s much disliked founding family’s private collection for a new museum.

Having left her post at the Library of Congress, it isn’t long before Juniper begins to question her move that she hoped would also bring her even closer with her sister, Azalea, who owns a local inn, as well as Leo Calverton, grandson to the historic family matriarch.

After discovering the body of a man clutching a rare copy of Poe, stolen from the Calverton collection, Juniper is certain the book has something to do with his death and can’t help but set out to find the murderer, even if it puts herself in jeopardy.

Silver brings readers a can’t-put-it-down mystery, with the perfect seasoning of romance, an interesting array of suspects that will keep you guessing and a rich cast of characters that makes it hard to wait for the next addition to the Rare Book Mystery Series.

I highly recommend The Tell-Tale Homicide for Poe-natics and cozy mystery fans alike. I received this advanced reader copy courtesy of the author. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

Coastal Christmas cozy

If you’re looking for a coastal Christmas cozy, look no further than Amelia Pine’s Killer Fruitcake.
In the second installment of her Sea Glass Beach mysteries, you’ll find surfing pups dressed in festive costumes, fruitcake, and of course, murder.

Milliner Paige Andrews and her friends in the Beachside Dining Club work to prove the innocence of the mother of a club member accused of killing her brother – the Avocado King, while keeping on the good side of the police chief/Paige’s mother’s boyfriend.

It’s a cute cozy with interesting characters, plenty of suspects and a few red herrings. You’ll also find a little romance in the air to go along with the holiday spirit, not to mention the spirit in Paige’s soon-to-open hat shop.

I recommend Killer Fruitcake for fans of beach cozy mysteries with a little romance. I received this advanced reader copy courtesy of the author. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1 as I share my new holiday favorite reads, giveaways and more.

Can’t-put-it down holiday whodunit


Leave it to an author with a name like Noelle Albright to pen a can’t-put-it down holiday whodunit with just the right amount of lightness and dark, humor and suspense, colorful characters, red herrings and a ghost in The Christmas Eve Murders.

I read it in one sitting and absolutely loved it!

Picture the bucolic glacier valleys of the Yorkshire Dales on Christmas Eve. Then imagine breaking down there in a snowstorm en route to Edinburgh to spend the holidays with the family. You realize you don’t have a cell signal when a strange man knocks on your window. That’s how journalist Maddie Marlow finds herself spending Christmas Eve with the locals at the Merry Monarch, just in time for the annual scavenger hunt.

Despite not knowing anyone, for Maddie, choosing teams for the evening’s festivities was easy. Choosing allegiances after a murder takes place in the snowbound pub is a whole other story. Who can she trust?

I highly recommend The Christmas Eve Murders to readers who enjoy humor and suspense in equal measures. I received this advanced reader copy from Quercus, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1 as I share my new holiday favorite reads, giveaways and more.

My new favorite Christmas mystery

I think USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Benedict may have just given me the gift of my most favorite Christmas mystery novel of all time – The Christmas Jigsaw Murders.

After receiving a parcel with six jigsaw pieces on her doorstep, Edie O’Sullivan, a crotchety octogenarian and renowned crosswords setter (whom I imagined as Stephanie Cole AKA Doc Martin’s Auntie Joan) must solve the most important puzzle of her life.

A cryptic note with the package read, “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” Signed, Rest in Pieces.

Recognizing something worrisome pictured in one of the puzzle pieces, Edie shares some of what she knows with her nephew/adopted son, DI Sean Brand-O’Sullivan. When a man is attacked and left for dead with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean forbids Edie from investigating any further in an effort to protect her.

Needless to say, Edie — a self-proclaimed pain in the arse, who has always gotten in her own way but has always done everything she could to protect Sean — is determined that she is the only one who can solve the mystery but she will have to face her demons to do so.

Also author of The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express, Benedict gives readers everything we need in a page-turner of a modern-day Christmas mystery. A ticking clock, characters with rich layers of back-story and humor, red herrings, suspects and true to the title, you need all the pieces to really solve the puzzle.

I ho-ho heartily recommend The Christmas Jigsaw Murders to fans of British mysteries, cozy mysteries, Christmas mysteries, LGBTQ+ mysteries and fans of anagrams, which Benedict has peppered throughout the novel, with nods to Dickens, Christine McVie and Fleetwood Mac.

I received an advance readers copy from Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1.

Clever five-star suspense

From the first page to the last, award winning author Maggie Smith delivers a clever, five-star suspense thriller in Blind Spot.

The tantalizing first chapter finds Assistant District Attorney Rachel Matthews, in court for the defense, in the most important criminal case of her career. Having always prided herself on the fact that she could read people, now she’s never been so wrong. Who can she trust?

Raising a teenage daughter as a single mom is never easy. With old family secrets, office politics, a stalker, not to mention a murder to solve, juggling takes on a whole new dimension for the ambitious attorney.

In this, her second novel, Smith offers a deftly plotted mystery with rich characters, red herrings, and twists and turns that keep you guessing, plus a WOW ending!

I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend Blind Spot, published by Puzzle Box Press, to mystery and suspense thriller fans. I received my copy courtesy of the author.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

Death and the Visitors – so worth the wait

Bestselling author Heather Redmond’s Death and the Visitors is the much anticipated sequel to her Mary Shelley Mystery series debut of Death and the Sisters. Now I eagerly await the third book in the series.

Once again, I loved getting to be a fly on the wall to the fictional goings on of the almost 17-year-old Frankenstein author, her months younger step-sister Jane (later known as Claire) Clairmont, acclaimed poet and Mary’s future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.

This installment set in 1814, London where royals and diplomats have descended on the city after Napoleon’s death and in advance of the Congress of Vienna, finds the trio as they seek to find missing diamonds, solve two murders, and keep Mary’s father out of debtor’s prison.

As enthusiastic followers of Mary’s late philosopher mother Mary Wollstonecraft, members of the advance team of the Russian contingent, which included the mesmerizing Polish Princess Maria, her Russian husband and his brother, visited the family home above the bookshop.

After a lively discussion at dinner, the Russians pledged diamonds in support of Mary’s father William Godwin and stepmother’s publishing venture, the Juvenile Library. However noble the work, it was failing financially with creditors leaning hard for payment.

When Godwin, sans diamonds, learns a Russian was pulled from the Thames, Mary, Jane and Shelley must try to remove suspicion from the family and keep the moneylenders at bay.

While the light-fingered, favored daughter Jane is off at singing lessons, where she meets the romantic poet Lord Byron – the future father of her daughter, Mary’s cruel stepmother sent the cook to prison for taking a dress belonging to sister, Fanny, and had Mary play Cinderella of sorts toiling away in the kitchen.

Toss in a Scottish suitor for Mary, as well as her attempted human trafficking kidnapping, you’ll find a well rounded mystery with twists and turns that will keep you guessing, not to mention allusions to Mary’s thinking that would one day be part of her iconic work.

I highly recommend Death and the Visitors to mystery fans, historical mystery fans, poetry, science fiction and horror fans. I received this advance reader’s copy from Kensington Books, courtesy of NetGalley.

Click here to read my review of the first Mary Shelley mysteries, Death and the Sisters.
Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

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