Murder on the Rocks

 

Murder on the Rocks (Lady Hardcastle Mystery 13)- T.E. Kinsey

Thomas & Mercer

Release Date: May 26, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: February 1913. Lady Hardcastle and her diminutive but mettlesome lady’s maid, Flo, have been invited by their friend JB McIntyre to spend the weekend at his recently renovated Tudor fort on a remote island off the Devonshire coast. But the holiday quickly turns sinister when first a number of valuable jewels go missing—and then a fellow guest is murdered with a most unusual weapon.

Asked by JB to investigate, the stakes are raised for the sleuthing duo when a violent storm traps the group on the island and cuts them off from help. Is the murderer in their midst? With everyone claiming to have an alibi—but each also having a skeleton in their closet—can Lady Hardcastle and Flo unravel this complex web of secrets and deception before the killer strikes again?

____________________________________________

Lady Hardcastle (Emily) and her lady's maid/assistant Florence are hoping for a long weekend to enjoy themselves when they are invited to friend JB McIntyre's island. He's getting it ready to become a resort getaway and wants some friends to test things out. All is well until some valuable jewelry is stolen—and then the rather unpleasant guest is murdered. No one is actually sorry he's dead, but no one wants a murderer on the guest list. Especially when he isn't the only one who gets killed. With everyone trapped on the island until Tuesday, can Emily and Flo solve the crimes and keep everyone else safe?

It's been ages since I read a Lady Hardcastle mystery (I think I read the first one) so I was pretty much coming into the series new. There are throwaway references to other cases, presumably from other books, but none that made me feel lost coming into the series at Book 13. I did enjoy this book, but I can't say it made me feel like I needed to go back and reread the rest of the series. The characters were all pretty basic and mostly 2-dimensional. Friends who aren't entirely friends because they have secrets, or don't like the bullying of a wife. One tells long-winded stories that everyone knows but are entertaining if you've had enough to drink. The servants who smuggle goods. The American millionaire who is obsessed with the latest inventions. The story itself plods along, dragging especially in the middle, before speeding up to the end with the quick solution. I figured out some of it, but there was a good twist in there that helped keep things going.

The best part of the book for me was the description and history of the island fort, which is really well done. The author builds the fort/island into an excellent site to explore and you can see the details inside and out as they are described. The historical accuracy for the time period is subtle but well drawn, and benefits from JB loving to have all the latest gadgets (and showing them off to guests!). 

A quiet cozy mystery that might appeal to people already in love with the series more than newcomers, but wasn't bad if you can accept a slightly slower than usual pace.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Murder on the Airship

 Murder on the Airship- Victoria Bergman

Stonehenge Circle  Press

Release Date: March 12, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: An emergency landing, quarreling elven and naga nobility, meddlesome dwarven officials, renegade pixies, dubious mercenaries, and a dragon who cheats at cards.

Bad enough without a murder.

Thyria had signed on to protect passengers, not investigate them. But she takes over morning watch aboard the Silver Kestrel, the finest airship aloft, to find a first-class passenger stabbed to death in his own stateroom.

Now she must investigate – tactfully, whatever that means – a burgeoning diplomatic incident, navigating the towering egos of influential passengers who each have something to hide.

Because if she doesn’t find her quarry within the day, this will be the Kestrel’s final flight.

________________________________________________

What would you get if Terry Pratchett's Discworld visited Agatha Christie's Murder on the Nile? Probably something along the lines of Victoria Bergman's Murder on the Airship. 

When guard Thyria finds one of the annoying first-class passengers stabbed to death on the airship Silver Kestrel, it isn't a great start to her day. The good news is that there are a limited number of suspects, since most of the passengers were in town partying for the solstice. The rest of the news is all bad. All the guests have reasons to want him dead; the airship has been sabotaged; the elves and naga are about five minutes from war and everyone is taking sides on the ship; there's at least two assassination attempts on top of the murder; a smuggled dragon; and let's not even mention the pixies. The guard who should be in charge is in sickbay with a bad case of being poisoned and it's up to Thyria to figure out what happened—preferably before the local dwarves get involved. But when everyone has a reason to want soomeone dead, how do you find the actual killer?

Thyria is a fun character. She's not a detective. She's the guard who gets to threaten smugglers and toss drunks off her ship while her boss handles things like "diplomacy" and "politeness". So she's completely out of her element being asked to deal with important ambasadors and first-class passengers. Give her a good bar fight any day! She's quite sure at first she can't handle the assignment. But the captain is busy and she's the only one left to handle it, so she has to grit her teeth and figure it out.

There's a delightful sense of humor to  Bergman's writing. Thyria approaches the murder (and the world) with a no-nonsense, we're-all-in-this-together-so-why-waste-my-time feeling. The various high-handed sensibilities of the senators, ambasadors, and self-described important people she has to deal with don't get anywhere with her. But they try. While she may not be able to threaten them the way she can incompentent mercenaries and moronic magic students, she learns the power of a fake smile and a little blackmail.

While things got a little overly complicated in ways they might not have needed to, and tangled with a few extra subplots, Murder on the Airship was a delightful cozy fantasy mystery that should make readers of both genres happy and looking for more by Victoria Bergman. I will certainly be hoping for more flights by the Silver Kestrel.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife- Martin Edwards

Poisoned Pen Press

Release Date: October 7, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Six down-on-their-luck people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust. The challenge seems simple but Solve the murder of a fictional crime writer in a remote but wonderfully atmospheric village in north Yorkshire to win a prize that will change your fortunes for good.

Six members of staff from the shadowy Trust are there to make sure everyone plays fair. The contestants have been meticulously vetted but you can never be too careful. And with the village about to be cut off by a snow storm, everyone needs to be extra vigilant. Midwinter can play tricks on people's minds.

The game is set - but playing fair isn't on everyone's Christmas list.

__________________________________________________

If you enjoy closed circle mysteries, puzzles, and a take on the locked-room mystery, Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife is going to be right up your book aisle. In this entertaining take on the Golden Age mystery books, Martin Edwards (whose nonfiction books on the development of the mystery genre are not to be missed!) has given readers a snowbound group of six people gathering together in a tiny village over Christmas for a murder mystery weekend. Each have ties to the crime writing world and each have recently had their careers take a nosedive. Their invitation promises the game's winner will have a life-altering change in fortune. But as people begin to die, the survivors must discover: are the deaths accidents? Is one of their group willing to kill to win the game? What secrets are their hosts hiding? And can any of them survive this traditional English country house Christmas?

I'm a huge Golden Age mystery fan, locked room puzzle fan, and Clue fan- so everything about Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife jumped out as a book I wanted to try. Martin Edwards name checks plenty of Golden Age writers and tropes, and invites the reader to solve the puzzle along with the six characters in the book- which is quite entertaining. It's a mystery within the mystery, because of course, what's a snowbound group to do in a mystery book except also try to stay alive and work out who's killing them off one by one? You get the story from different perspectives, but the most entertaining one (for me) was washed-up crime writer Harry Crystal. Harry and his books (all titles are riffs on famous mystery novels you may have heard of) are washed up, his wife and daughter have left him, and the world- pretty much including Harry- have written him off as a perpetual loser. But from the beginning Harry feels like there's something else going on in Midwinter and secrets he may be the only person left out of. He's the least likely to win, but can he surprise everyone and save the day? 

If you like classic snowbound mysteries, Midsummer Murders, puzzles, and humor with your whodunits, give Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife a try! The perfect read when you're inside and the snow is falling outside. 

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

Tale of 2 Kitties

A Tale of Two Kitties (Magical Cats)- Sofie Kelly
Berkley/Penguin Group
Release Date: September 5, 2017

Rating (out of 5):
📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: With a well-placed paw on a keyboard or a pointed stare, Kathleen’s two cats, Hercules and Owen, have helped her to solve cases in the past—so she has learned to trust their instincts. But she will need to rely on them more than ever when a twenty-year-old scandal leads to murder…
 
The arrival of the Janes brothers has the little town of Mayville Heights buzzing. Everyone of a certain age remembers when Victor had an affair with Leo’s wife, who then died in a car accident.
 

Now it seems the brothers are trying to reconcile, until Kathleen finds Leo dead. The police set their sights on Leo’s son and Kathleen’s good friend Simon, who doesn’t have much of an alibi. To prove her friend innocent, Kathleen will have to dig deep into the town's history—and into her sardine cracker supply, because Owen and Hercules don't work for free...

_________________________________

Head Librarian Kathleen Paulson has a reputation for solving crimes before the police do. What people in her little town of Maryville Heights don't know is that she gets a lot of help from her two cats Owen and Hercules.  So when she stumbles into a long running family drama and then into a dead body, many of her friends want her to solve the murder and make the problem go away.  Owen and Hercules may never have met Leo Janes while he was alive, but they certainly seem interested in helping him now that he's dead!

A Tale of Two Kitties lived up to the feeling of its blurb: a cute, fun, cozy cat mystery.  I hadn't realized before starting Kitties that this is the latest in a series by Sofie Kelly, but found quickly that while she may often refer to things that happened in other books, we don't need to have read the rest of the series to jump right in here.  Owen and Hercules (I enjoyed that she admits Hercules is named after Kevin Sorbo's Hercules, since I enjoyed that show too!) are magical mystery cats with special abilities.  Owen can (literally) disappear from sight and Hercules can walk through walls.  Both cats seem to understand what is said to them and both seem to have an instinct for crime solving and pushing hints Kathleen's way.  No one else knows the cats can do this, but she's worrying about the time when she has to admit it to her boyfriend Marcus (a police officer who only believes in facts) since his kitten seems to be displaying the same talents.  I liked that while Kathleen occasionally wonders how the cats can do what they do (who wouldn't?) she accepts their abilities as just one of those things, therefore the reader does as well.

I did have trouble keeping many of the secondary characters straight, which got a little confusing until I decided it didn't matter and just didn't try to remember who was who.  This was probably something that someone who has read the other books in the series would not have had trouble with.  Kathleen herself in often not a deep or well drawn character, but for this book I didn't necessarily feel like it mattered, although it would have been nice. She's the kind of person that others talk to, that complete strangers feel comfortable sharing secrets with.  As someone in the library field myself, I can assure you that this happens more often than a skeptic might think.  And it is certainly convenient for a civilian trying to solve a murder! I was a little disappointed in the solution itself.  The killer is the most logical person who the characters never suspected, and the motive felt pretty weak and thin.  It was the kind of motive that made you wish for more character development so that you could feel like it was more satisfying conclusion than it actually was.     

Fans of Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie Brown's Mrs Murphy series and Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who series definitely need to start reading Sofie Kelly's Magical Cats books!  Those of us who enjoy a quick, fun mystery will also enjoy A Tale of Two Kitties, especially as a nice summer/fall read.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Quiet Life in the Country

A Quiet Life in the Country- T E Kinsey
Thomas & Mercer
Release Date: October 4, 2016

Rating (Out of 5):
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they’ve just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life.

But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There’s a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation…

As Lady Hardcastle and Flo delve deeper into rural rivalries and resentment, they uncover a web of intrigue that extends far beyond the village. With almost no one free from suspicion, they can be certain of only one fact: there is no such thing as a quiet life in the country.

____________________

The first of a promising new series, A Quiet Life in the Country introduces readers to the mysterious Lady Hardcastle and her maid/friend Florence Armstrong.  An unconventional widow, Lady Hardcastle has traveled the world both with her husband and, after his death, with her maid- who through shared life and death experiences becomes her close friend and confidante.  Through some of her conversations and Flo's memories we learn tantalizing bits of of their past exploits.  I'm torn on whether I hope to get more details about those exploits in future books or if its more fun to imagine the circumstances that get blithely referred to.  I think I lean towards hoping Kinsey continues to give us entertaining hints without the details so we can fill in the gaps ourselves, which not only allows us to imagine all sorts of things but also keeps the narrative flowing smoothly instead of getting bogged down in establishing long past histories of characters. 

A Quiet Life is told from Flo's point of view, giving us not only some delightful below stairs scenes but also Flo's entertaining and occasionally irreverent train of thought as events unfold.  She and Lady Hardcastle have retired to the country for a quiet life and on their first walk through the woods they discover a dead body.  The quiet life quickly goes out the window as Lady Hardcastle decides the police aren't on the right track and she wants to step in and 'help'.  Unlike many amateur detectives, Lady Hardcastle and Flo gain the appreciation and support of the inspector on the case. Inspector Sunderland turns out to be not just an 'official' figure but an intelligent man who learns to overlook not only the fact that Flo and Lady Hardcastle are civilians, but women as well.  A budding friendship between these three people from very different backgrounds and social positions will be interesting to watch develop in future books.

 Jewel theives, dodgy musicians, suspicious cricket players, obnoxious social climbers, and another dead body convince us all that there is no such thing as a quiet life in the country.   

A Quiet Life in the Country is a delightfully entertaining, wittily written, fast paced mystery full of delightful characters and charming English country life.  Mystery fans will enjoy this new voice on the English murder mystery scene. 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.