Spring seems a very long way away right now. Maybe that is why the cover of Kayte Nunn’s The Botanist’s Daughter caught my eye. The birds and blooms are certainly spirit raising and make me think of Spring. Kayte Nunn lives in Australia, although she is not Australian by birth and has lived and worked in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The book has two story lines one set in the present, well 2017, and the other in the late nineteenth century starting c 1886. A box discovered when Anna is renovating a house, in Sydney, left to her by her grandmother sets her off on a journey to the U.K. and the high temple of plants and gardens, Kew Gardens. This is the reverse journey of Elizabeth who left Cornwall in 1886 and arrived in Sydney via Valparaiso. Lots of interesting information about plants and wonderful descriptions of the physical locations. I have never really taken to the style of two parallel stories separated by time but I did enjoy these stories and thought that they were skilfully merged. A good read.
Ron Base and Prudence Emery, once again take us back to the swinging sixties in London. Scandal at the Savoy sees Priscilla Tempest, the Canadian head of the Savoy’s press office, embroiled in another murder. As in the previous novel Priscilla is in a somewhat ambiguous position. Although not a serious suspect, Priscilla is unable to fully clear her name because of a dalliance with a glamorous, unnamed, Canadian Prime Minister (I wonder who?) who is staying at the hotel. The larger-than-life celebrity guests add to the general chaos. The London in this novel is, as in the previous novel, Death at the Savoy, very realistic even if the plot is far fetched. If you want a serious read this is not for you but it is a very enjoyable escape from reality.
One thing I really enjoyed about, A Spoonful of Murder, J.M. Hall’s first mystery novel with retired schoolteachers, Liz, Thelma, and Pat, was how real it felt. The characters seemed real, the locations seemed real and certainly the issue at the heart of the novel is one which is very prevalent in today’s society. In A Pen Dipped in Poison, the issue is poison pen letters which are tearing apart St. Barnabus, the local school and then by extension the local community. We learn a lot more about the background and lives of the three detectives. This is a very good read, well written and well plotted.
I don’t read a lot of fantasy but I am always looking for books that I will enjoy. Back in 2020 I came across Garth Nix’ The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, and I really enjoyed it. Set in London in 1983, art student, Susan Arkshaw is trying to find the father that she has never met. During her search she meets Merlin, a left handed bookseller, part of a community that straddles the present world and the Old World. The second title in the series has just been released. I must be honest I did not enjoy, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, quite as much as the first one. But the plot moves along nicely and the characters are very engaging.
In case you think I only read books set in London or the United Kingdom, I have just finished Jesse Q Sutanto’s Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers which is set in San Francisco. At 60 years of age Vera Wong fits very neatly into a demographic which is becoming a driving force in mystery fiction. The owner of a rather dilapidated tea house in San Francisco, where customers are few and far between, Vera’s rather lonely life is up-ended when one morning she discovers a dead body in the middle of the tea room. She is disappointed with the lackadaisical and off handed way that the police deal with the death. Vera knows that this was not just a heart attack! Well, it turns out that she was right! A good read with an interesting twist at the end.