Tag: crime

#BookReview Sanctuary Motel by Alan Orloff @levelbestbooks

whatcathyreadnext

About the Book

Mess Hopkins, proprietor of the seen-better-days Fairfax Manor Inn, never met a person in need who couldn’t use a helping hand — his helping hand. So he’s thrown open the doors of the motel to the homeless, victims of abuse, or anyone else who could benefit from a comfy bed with clean sheets and a roof overhead. This rankles his parents and uncle, who technically still own the place and are more concerned with profits than philanthropy.

When a mother and her teenage boy seek refuge from an abusive husband, Mess takes them in until they can get back on their feet. Shortly after arriving, the mom goes missing and some very bad people come sniffing around, searching for money they claim belongs to them. Mess tries to pump the boy for helpful information, but he’s in full uncooperative teen mode — grunts, shrugs, and monosyllabic answers. From what he does learn, Mess can tell he’s not getting the straight scoop.

It’s not long before the boy vanishes too. Abducted? Run away? Something worse? And who took the missing money?

Mess, along with his friend Vell Jackson and local news reporter Lia Katsaros, take to the streets to locate the missing mother and son — and the elusive, abusive husband — before the kneecapping loansharks find them first.

Format: eARC (254 pages) Publisher: Level Best Books
Publication date: 24th October 2023 Genre: Mystery

Find Sanctuary Motel on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Fairfax Manor Inn may be a bit run down (and the adjoining mini golf course may have seen its last hole in one) but the motel is a place of generosity and philanthropy thanks to Mess Hopkins who has a heart of gold and makes a wonderfully engaging protagonist. I think most of us would agree with his view: ‘So many people in this world . . . needed help. And not just a cup of sugar or a hand moving a heavy sleeper sofa into the basement. Serious life-changing help.’ Unfortunately his Uncle Phil, who has been given reponsibility for overseeing the business in the absence of Mess’s parent, would be the exception.

Mess forms a really touching relationship with Kevin, the teenage son of the missing woman, although doing so takes a lot of patience. By the way, if you’re wondering how Mess got his nickname, you’ll have to read the book.

I loved the cast of secondary characters, particularly Mess’s friend and sidekick, Vell, who has a seemingly inexhaustible list of contacts. He boasts, ‘I got my own personal Internet, on the streets. People see me coming, they’re dying to tell me stuff. Think of me like Vellipedia.’ I also really enjoyed the back-and-forth banter between Mess and Vell. Mama (although she’s actually Vell’s grandmother) is another fantastic, larger than life character. She has a laugh ‘like a thunderstorm’, is a giver of huge bear hugs, has turned her ability to read people into a money-making venture and believes there’s no such thing as a table with too much food. Just as well, as both Vell and Kevin, have seemingly insatiable appetites.

If Mess and Vell are the good guys then of course you need some bad guys to even things up and the author provides us with plenty, including the missing woman’s abusive husband and some heavies working for the local organised crime head honcho. Mess and Vell have some narrow escapes and in the process of resolving the mystery of the disappearance of Kevin’s mother uncover some distinctly dirty goings-on.

A motel with its ever changing population of guests is a great location around which to base a crime mystery series so I’m looking forward to future arrivals at Fairfax Manor Inn, plus seeing if its owner can avoid making a ‘mess’ (sorry!) of his budding relationship with Lia.

Sanctuary Motel is an enjoyable crime mystery with a plot that will keep you guessing and characters you’ll find yourself rooting for.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Level Best Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Entertaining, intriguing, humorous

Try something similar: In Strangers’ Houses by Elizabeth Mundy

About the Author

Alan Orloff has published ten novels and more than forty short stories. His work has won an Anthony, an Agatha, a Derringer, and two ITW Thriller Awards. He’s also been a finalist for the Shamus Award, and has had a story (‘Rule Number One’) selected for the Best American Mystery Stories anthology.

He loves cake and arugula, but not together. Never together. He lives and writes in South Florida, where the examples of hijinks are endless (Photo/bio: Author website)

Connect with Alan
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

#BookReview #BlogTour The Mystery of Yew Tree House by Lesley Thomson @HoZ_Books @AriesFiction

whatcathyreadnext

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Mystery of Yew Tree House by Lesley Thomson, which will be published tomorrow. My thanks to Poppy at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my advance review copy. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Rachel at Rachel Read It.

About the Book

Eighty years of secrets. A body that reveals them all.

1940. At Yew Tree House, recently widowed Adelaide Stride is raising her two daughters alone – but it’s not just the threat of German invasion that keeps her up at night. She is surrounded by enemies posing as allies and, while war rages, she grows sure that something terrible is about to happen.

2023. Soon after Stella Darnell begins her holiday at Yew Tree House, a skeleton is found in a pillbox at the bottom of the garden. The bullet hole in the skull tells her that the person was murdered.

This triggers the unravelling of a mystery eighty years in the making. Soon, Stella will learn that Adelaide was right to worry – the fighting might have been happening abroad, but the true enemy was always much closer to home…

Format: Hardback (320 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 14th September 2023 Genre: Crime

Find The Mystery of Yew Tree House on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Bookshop.org 
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Mystery of Yew Tree House is the ninth book in Lesley Thomson’s ‘The Detective’s Daughter’ series featuring cleaner turned amateur detective, Stella Darnell and her partner, tube driver Jack Harmon. Although the book could be enjoyed as a standalone there’s a lot of background information about Stella and Jack’s personal and professional history for readers new to the series to absorb, as well as some references to past cases. I’ve only read one other book in the series, The Playground Murders back in 2019, so it took me a little time to refamiliarise myself with past events and the relationships between returning characters.

At one point, a character remarks to Stella, ‘I can’t see the attraction of holidaying in a village. They are described as idyllic, but they are places of poison. Behind the facade of a pond, a green, a war memorial, lies cruelty and violence’. Too right. In fact, Bishopstone seems a peculiar place for Stella and Jack to have chosen as a holiday destination since the area holds unpleasant memories for both of them.

Stella and Jack have reached a turning point in their relationship with Stella, in particular, concerned about the prospect of them becoming a permanent family unit. Given the resilience she has shown in other situations, I thought her worries about whether she possessed suitable parenting skills were misplaced. Having said that, perhaps Stella was right to worry because Jack’s seven-year-old daughter, Milly, proves a bit of a handful, determined single-handedly to track down the murderer. Oh Milly, if only they’d paid more attention to you!

The story moves between the present day and a timeline which starts in 1940. I particularly enjoyed the past timeline and would have been happy to have had more of this. I thought it was clever to have the start of the mystery be in wartime, a time when people were displaced, families were often separated, ordinary citizens were armed and trained in how to kill, and the blackout was the perfect cover for illicit activities. I was particularly fascinated to learn about preparations put in place in the event of Britain’s occupation by the Nazis.

The Mystery of Yew Tree House is a skilfully plotted crime novel with plenty of twists and turns, false trails and surprise reveals. If you guessed all of the latter, you’re a genius.

In three words: Intriguing, clever, engaging

Try something similar: The Ghost Tree by M. R. C. Kasasian

About the Author

Copyright: Michael White

Lesley Thomson grew up in west London. Her novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won The People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was a #1 bestseller and the resulting series has sold over 900,000 copies.

Lesley divides her time between Sussex and Gloucestershire. She lives with her partner and her dog.

Connect with Lesley
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram