Category Archives: Mysteries

Fallen Into the Pit

Posted on 6 April 2019 by Barbara Howe

Before there was Brother Cadfael, there was Inspector Felse. Ellis Peters is well known for her series of historical mysteries featuring the Welsh monk, Brother Cadfael. She began writing those in the late 1970s, but she honed her skills on … Continue reading →

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Witch

Posted on 1 February 2019 by Barbara Howe

The old house is perfect. Ellen March falls in love on first sight with the pre-Revolution farmhouse, sitting in a clearing surrounded by lilacs, apple trees, dogwoods, oaks, and maples. It doesn’t matter to her that the locals say the … Continue reading →

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Have His Carcase

Posted on 15 June 2018 by Barbara Howe

What would you do if you came across the body of a man with his throat cut, so recently dead that the still-liquid blood is running in a glistening stream down the side of the rock he is lying on? … Continue reading →

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Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body

Posted on 7 April 2018 by Barbara Howe

In Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body by New Zealand-born author Simon Petrie, hard science fiction intersects with another of my favourite genres, crime fiction. In a mining colony on Titan, Saturn’s moon, a young woman, Tanja Morgenstein, … Continue reading →

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Gaudy Night

Posted on 9 December 2017 by Barbara Howe

I’ve already written about Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, but Gaudy Night, the penultimate book in the series, deserves a post of its own. Gaudy Night does not conform to genre conventions. Yes, it is a mystery, but … Continue reading →

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Dorothy L Sayers

Posted on 25 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

Dorothy L Sayers is the writer most responsible for my ongoing love affair with British mystery novels. Her primary protagonist, Lord Peter Wimsey, may not be my favourite fictional detective—Brother Cadfael wins that honour—but he runs a close second. Written … Continue reading →

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Rivers of London

Posted on 3 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

In the first chapter of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, probationary constable Peter Grant of the Metropolitan Police Service tries to take a witness statement from a man he doesn’t realise at first is a ghost. Pretty soon Grant finds … Continue reading →

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The Moonspinners

Posted on 29 October 2017 by Barbara Howe

Nicola Ferris, a young Englishwoman on holiday from her job at the British embassy in Athens, goes for a walk in the White Mountains of Crete, and stumbles onto a badly wounded young Englishman, Mark Langley, and his Greek guide. … Continue reading →

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Lord Darcy

Posted on 17 June 2017 by Barbara Howe

The time: the 1960’s. The place: the bustling port of Cherbourg. A nobleman in the Anglo-French Empire, engaged in a sensitive international inquiry, is missing. Lord Darcy, detective, and Master Sean O Lochlainn, forensic sorcerer, have been summoned to investigate. … Continue reading →

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