#BookReview THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB by RICHARD OSMAN

ABOUT THE BOOK

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves
A female cop with her first big case
A brutal murder
Welcome to…
THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?

PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN

PURCHASE LINKS

Amazon
Goldsboro – signed first edition
blackwell’s – signed edition

MY REVIEW

I was in need of a fun read to escape the world, and this was perfect for me! Plenty of chuckles and intrigue galore as we follow the Thursday Murder Club in their quest to solve murders close to home!

It had that real Agatha Raisin feel to it, with the goings on of a community mixed in with the darker element of crime, and you are taken along for the ride! AS the list of suspects grow with their investigations, you as the reader are the fly on the wall trying to work out who your money is on for being the perpertrator! I loved the twists and turns!

Those solving the murder mystery are not your normal investigators! They’re a group of pensioners who live at the Coopers Chase retirement village and had set up their own ‘murder club’ to pass the time on a Thursday as they loved to solve old murder cases. But when there is a murder on their doorstep, they step in to solve the mystery and no stone is left unturned as they thoroughly investigate the dodgy dealings and it was so much fun to see how they all came together and threw themselves into the case!

Even the police end up being manipulated by the crafty oldies who would use their sneaky ways to get the information they wanted for their investigations and I loved their creativeness!!

AS the plot thickens, and the dodgy dealings escalate, it all builds up nicely in pulling the community together to thwart the bad elements!! Lots of fun and I’m already looking forward to more crime solving from these characters in book 2!!

★★★★

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#BlogTour Death on the Ocean by Martha Fischer #BookReview @Bookollective

Delighted to be the stop today for the DEATH ON THE OCEAN blog tour! My thanks to the author, publisher and Bookollective for letting me be part of it all!

ABOUT THE BOOK

A story where romance meets crime. Amanda Lipton leads a fairly uneventful life as a teacher. The most she has to worry about is staff room politics and petty quarrels among pupils and colleagues. But everything changes as she wins a million in a TV show! 

To escape the stuffy atmosphere at school, Amanda decides to change her life and take a luxury cruise, no expense spared. Expecting a life of luxury aboard the Belgravia, she is dismayed to find events rapidly spiraling out of control. Her fellow passengers are not as they seem and eventually she’s drawn to two men – but can she trust them? And… whom to choose? 

When she witnesses what looks like a cold blooded murder, Amanda realises that her own life could be in danger. 

A delightful romantic comedy with a twist of suspense and murder to it.

PURCHASE LINK

Amazon UK

MY REVIEW

This was a fun read for me – real escapism and  a nice cosy mystery added to the mix along with the romance side of things, so there was always that element of what was going to happen next, and wondering just who to trust! Just like the main character, Amanda, who found herself getting paranoid about people while she was supposed to be having the time of her life!

Amanda has a normal life as a teacher, dealing with the politics of school life, but when she finds herself winning a million on a TV quiz show, she soon finds life changing around her but not for the best! People she thought were her friends are soon after her money, so she decides to throw caution to the wind and get away from it all by going on a luxury cruise! Surely life will be happier and simpler on holiday?! Wrong!!!

On the cruise she finds a variety of people from different walks of life, even a Nobel Prize Winner, but things start to get very wrong quite soon when she appears to witness someone being thrown overboard – or did she?! Maybe the victim had been drinking and fallen – the whispers amongst the other passengers and the theories start to stack up as to what did happen that night.

She seems the type of person not to let things lie so sets out to find out more about people – but someone doesn’t like her interfering as she gets a threatening message under her door. And then there’s another victim….

This had lots to keep you guessing and loved how she also managed to attract romantic attention while getting to know more of the passengers!  You really don’t know who to trust amongst the characters involved as there’s definitely more to some than meets the eye and I had great fun trying to work out who was most likely to be the killer!!

Good fun and very quick and easy to read!

★★★

#BlogTour Rubies in the Roses by Vivian Conroy #BookReview

Welcome to Cornisea island and spend your summer holidays in a Cornish Castle.

Guinevere Evans has a dream summer job: cataloguing books at a castle on a tidal island off the coast of Cornwall. With her perky dachshund Dolly by her side she explores the island’s colourful history, tries fabulous local food and sees the gorgeous sunsets.

But when an old friend of her employer drops in, claiming a rare bejewelled wedding goblet is hidden in the castle gardens, strange events start to take place: several people turn up claiming they have a right to the elusive goblet, and a dead body is found on the beach.

An unfortunate accident, or does this death relate to the struggle for ownership of the goblet? Is there even a goblet?

Guinevere and Dolly dig in and discover plenty of motives to lie, steal and yes, maybe even kill. Can they prove what really happened to the victim and what became of the precious rubies that are at the heart of the mystery?

Amazon UK

Delighted to be part of this fabulous Blog Tour today and to share my thoughts on another fabulous read from Vivian Conroy – if you’d like to know more about Vivian then please follow her via Twitter @VivWrites

MY REVIEW

Guinevere and her faithful companion Dolly the dachsund are back for more mystery solving in this engaging series set in Cornisea Island.

Following on from the first in the series, Death Plays A Part, Guinevere is still at the Castle helping Lord Bolingbrooke catalogue his extensive library, and life in this idyllic setting takes a sinister twist once more. With the arrival of old acquaintances, a treasure hunt for a lost goblet soon becomes the talk of the Island, and pits friends old and new against each other, as they try and track it down and claim ownership. And when another body washes up in the docks, it becomes clear that this goblet search is proving to be a costly one.

I loved the return of the characters from the first book, with the new additions adding extra depth, and although it is part of a series it can easily be read as a stand alone. The storyline was really easy to be drawn into, and I found it to have a slightly darker edge than the first book, but still managed some lighter moments – normally thanks to Dolly and her exploits!

It was full of intrigue and kept me guessing from start to finish and I found myself suspecting everyone! Not sure I’d make a great detective!! I have been well and truly won over by the cosy mystery genre and look forward to finding more mysteries to enjoy!!

thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the advanced e-copy in return for a fair and honest review