#BlogTour #BookReview A Messy Affair by Elizabeth Mundy

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A Messy Affair

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for A Messy Affair by Elizabeth Mundy, the third book in the Lena Szarka Mystery series. Thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Constable for my review copy via NetGalley.

A Messy AffairAbout the Book

The only way is murder…

Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner working in London, is forced to brush up on her detective skills for a third time when her cousin Sarika is plunged into danger.

Sarika and her reality TV star boyfriend Terry both receive threatening notes. When Terry stops calling, Lena assumes he’s lost interest. Until he turns up. Dead. Lena knows she must act fast to keep her cousin from the same fate.

Scrubbing her way through the grubby world of reality television, online dating and betrayed lovers, Lena finds it harder than she thought to discern what’s real – and what’s just for the cameras.

Format: ebook (288 pages)                     Publisher: Constable
Publication date:  2nd January 2020   Genre: Crime, mystery

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find A Messy Affair on Goodreads

My Review

I really enjoyed the previous two books featuring Lena Szarka, In Strangers’ Houses and A Clean Canvas (links from the title will take you to my spoiler free reviews), however A Messy Affair can also be enjoyed as a standalone read.

Readers unfamiliar with the series should be warned the books contain scenes of heavy duty cleaning and unrestrained use of dusters, mops and other dirt fighting weapons. And beware the wrath of Lena if you pronounce her name to rhyme with ‘cleaner’ rather than as it should be. However, if you get on her right side, she may just reward you with her special formula for removing limescale from shower heads or her mother’s recipe for dumplings.

You may have gathered from this that Lena is quite a character. With an eye for detail, whether that’s dust on a skirting board or lipstick on a glass, Lena is never happier than when she’s cleaning and listening to the comforting purr of the vacuum cleaner. As she says, “Cleaning is the best time to solve crime. It frees up your mind to new possibilities.”

Once again, it’s Lena’s extended family that draws her into investigating a crime. At least it’s something to keep her from pining for love interest PC Cartwright or worrying about unfinished business with previous adversary, Yasemin Avci. Thankfully, Lena has a useful new ally in the shape of ex-journalist Mrs Kingston with her network of contacts. The book’s satisfyingly multi-layered plot, peopled with plenty of suspects, is set against the backdrop of contemporary, multicultural London.

Spanning the shiny world of reality TV and the decidedly grubby world of internet dating, A Messy Affair is another polished, sparkling crime mystery from the pen of Elizabeth Mundy (Ed: That’s enough of the cleaning references now.)

In three words: Lively, engaging, mystery

Try something similar: Madam Tulip by David Ahern

Elizabeth MundyAbout the Author

Elizabeth Mundy’s grandmother was a Hungarian immigrant to America who raised five children on a chicken farm in Indiana. Elizabeth is a marketing director for an investment firm and lives in London with her messy husband and two young children. She writes the Lena Szarka Mysteries, featuring a Hungarian cleaner as detective.

Connect with Elizabeth

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

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Buchan of the Month: Sir Quixote of the Moors by John Buchan #ReadJB2020

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Appropriately, perhaps, my first Buchan of the Month for 2020 is John Buchan’s first published novel, Sir Quixote of the Moors. You can find out more about the project and my reading list for 2020 here. What follows is an introduction to Sir Quixote of the Moors.   I will be publishing my review of the book later this month.

20200118_131258Sir Quixote of the Moors was published by T Fisher Unwin in the UK and by Henry Holt & Co in the US in October 1895, by which time Buchan was in his first year at Brasenose College, Oxford to which he had won a scholarship. He had started writing the book whilst in his last year at Glasgow University and the book is dedicated to his tutor, Gilbert Murray.

In early signs of the industrious nature which would be his lifelong habit, Janet Adam Smith, Buchan’s first biographer, quotes him recording, “I would do a few sentences in the morning while waiting for breakfast, a few more at the Union, and more at night in the intervals of my College work.”

Janet Adam Smith reports Buchan was annoyed his publisher changed the title from simply Sir Quixote, adding ‘of the Moors’ apparently to fall into line with the fashion in titles at the time. He was even more annoyed when his US publisher changed the ending quite fundamentally!

Although detecting echoes of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona or Kidnapped (Buchan was an ardent admirer of Stevenson), Adam Smith is unimpressed with the book describing its construction as ‘rather clumsy’ and the writing ‘rather precious’. Buchan scholar, David Daniell, is a little more generous, describing it as ‘a little masterpiece’ praising the balance ‘between motion and stillness, between wild and temperate weather, between outdoor and indoor, harsh and beautiful, older and younger, male and female’.

No sales figures are available for the book and at the time Janet Adam Smith’s biography of John Buchan was published in 1965, Sir Quixote of the Moors was one of the few Buchan novels not to have been published in paperback.

Sources:

Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])
David Daniell, The Interpreter’s House: A Critical Assessment of John Buchan (Nelson, 1975)
Kenneth Hillier and Michael Ross, The First Editions of John Buchan: A Collector’s Illustrated Biography (Avonworld, 2008)