A delightful classic village mystery studded with little-known World War II facts: a promising series debut.
A resourceful young Englishwoman gets involved in a homefront World War II mystery.
The departure of Olive Bright’s friend George for air force training leaves her at loose ends but eager to do something to live up to her mother’s World War I ambulance service. There's plenty to keep Olive occupied in the small village of Pipley, especially once she assumes the care and training of her father’s racing pigeons. Her father, a veterinary surgeon, is trying to get the pigeons included in the war effort. The villagers are going all out for victory, but hidden currents are being stirred up by nosy Verity Husselbee. When Jameson Aldridge shows up to see the pigeons, Olive, under the impression that he’s from the Pigeon Service, gives him a tour only to learn that he works for the secretive Baker Street intelligence organization. Sparks fly between Olive and Jamie, and she agrees to work with him and keep her father out of the loop. Leaving the village dance, Olive and Jamie, who are pretending to be dating, find that Olive’s helper, Jonathon, has stumbled over the body of Miss Husselbee, dead after eating a poisoned Spam cake at the refreshment table. Resolving to use the skills she’s learned from reading Agatha Christie novels to solve the crime, Olive must consider even her best friend a potential killer. As she juggles detective work with training her pigeons and cultivating her relationship with Jamie, she turns up some bombshell revelations.
A delightful classic village mystery studded with little-known World War II facts: a promising series debut.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-3151-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Another odd and exciting case for a pair of passionate sleuths who never let Victorian mores stand in their way.
Do vampires exist? That’s a question for a detective duo whose cases are never mundane in 1890s England.
Lepidopterist Veronica Speedwell cares little about the gossip swirling around her and lover, naturalist and adventurer Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, scion of an aristocratic family, who eschews the trappings of his class. Together, they’ve solved many unusual murder cases, and they’re rather bored with their ordinary job of cataloging an extensive collection for the Earl of Rosemorran at his home in Marylebone. The arrival of their friend J.J., a journalist, and then of Scotland Yard detective Mornaday, both with tales of woe, makes their lives distinctly more interesting. Mornaday tells them that the body of a man named Maurice Quincey was found in a carriage outside Highgate Cemetery, looking as if he might have died of natural causes but for the fang marks in his neck. This sparks an argument between the lovers, as Veronica naturally thinks of vampires while Stoker ridicules the idea. Oddly, Jameson Harkness, Quincey’s best friend, died the week before in a fall from a balcony, possibly not by accident. The only real clues to Quincey’s death are the sighting of a Romany boy near the carriage and the shifty testimony of one of Quincey’s friends about a secret society. A visit to a Romany camp is interesting and informative. Stoker and Veronica receive an invitation from Lord Ruthven, who certainly looks like a vampire, and his friend Asphodel, who’s very witchy indeed, but both are fakes and fraudsters willing to use potions and poisons to get their way. The detectives find themselves in grave danger but are unafraid of anything that’s coming.
Another odd and exciting case for a pair of passionate sleuths who never let Victorian mores stand in their way.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780593815731
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
