Tag: historical mystery

#BlogTour #BookReview Death Makes No Distinction by Lucienne Boyce

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Death Makes No Distinction

I’m delighted to be co-hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Death Makes No Distinction by Lucienne Boyce, the third in the Dan Foster Mystery series. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to the author for my review copy.

DMND Cover PrintAbout the Book

Two women at opposite ends of the social scale, both brutally murdered.

Principal Officer Dan Foster of the Bow Street Runners is surprised when his old rival John Townsend requests his help to investigate the murder of Louise Parmeter, a beautiful writer who once shared the bed of the Prince of Wales. Her jewellery is missing, savagely torn from her body. Her memoirs, which threaten to expose the indiscretions of the great and the good, are also missing.

Frustrated by the chief magistrate’s demand that he drop the investigation into the death of the unknown beggar woman, found savagely raped and beaten and left to die in the outhouse of a Holborn tavern, Dan is determined to get to the bottom of both murders. But as his enquiries take him into both the richest and the foulest places in London, and Townsend’s real reason for requesting his help gradually becomes clear, Dan is forced to face a shocking new reality when the people he loves are targeted by a shadowy and merciless adversary.

The investigation has suddenly got personal.

Format: ebook, paperback (264 pages)   Publisher: SilverWood Books
Publication date: 20th September 2019 Genre: Historical fiction, crime, mystery

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

Find Death Makes No Distinction on Goodreads

My Review

Although Death Makes No Distinction is the third in the author’s historical mystery series featuring Bow Street Principal Officer, Dan Foster, it can be enjoyed as a standalone if, like me, you’ve not read the two previous books in the series. There are, however, a number of references to key events in the earlier books and nuggets of information about Dan’s early life, no doubt explored more fully in the first two books (Bloodie Bones and The Butcher’s Block). Therefore readers who like the sound of this book might want to start from the beginning of the series.

Although death may make no distinction, as the title proposes, there is certainly a distinction when it comes to the priority accorded to investigating and solving the two crimes. Louise Parmeter’s relationship with the Prince of Wales (amusingly described as ‘a tub in blue on a pink sofa’ at one point) means her murder is considered much more important than the death of a prostitute. Indeed the latter is looked upon much as an occupational hazard. Dan has a more egalitarian sense of justice and begs to differ. It has to be said, however, that the majority of the book is taken up with the investigation of Louise Parmeter’s murder.

The course of Dan’s investigation takes the reader from the lavish surroundings and hedonistic lifestyles of the nobility to the lower reaches of society and the criminal underworld encompassing everything from bare knuckle prize-fighting, smuggling, prostitution to kidnapping, blackmail and murder.

Death Makes No Distinction is an assured historical crime mystery with a wealth of period detail that is sure to entertain fans of the genre.

In three words: Engaging, atmospheric, mystery

Try something similar: Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (read my review here)

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Death - L Boyce Landscape LRAbout the Author

Lucienne Boyce writes historical fiction, non-fiction and biography. After gaining an MA in English Literature (with Distinction) with the Open University in 2007, specialising in eighteenth-century fiction, she published her first historical novel, To The Fair Land, in 2012, an eighteenth-century thriller set in Bristol and the South Seas.

Her second novel, Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery (2015) is the first of the Dan Foster Mysteries and follows the fortunes of a Bow Street Runner who is also an amateur pugilist. Bloodie Bones was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016, and was also a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction 2016. The second Dan Foster Mystery, The Butcher’s Block, was published in 2017 and was awarded an IndieBrag Medallion in 2018. The third in the series, Death Makes No Distinction, was published in 2019. In 2017 an e-book Dan Foster novella, The Fatal Coin, was trade published by SBooks.

In 2013, Lucienne published The Bristol Suffragettes, a history of the suffragette movement in Bristol and the west country. In 2017 she published a collection of short essays, The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign.

Lucienne has appeared on television and radio in connection with her fiction and non-fiction work. She regularly gives talks and leads walks about the women’s suffrage movement. She also gives talks and runs workshops on historical fiction for literary festivals, Women’s Institutes, local history societies, and other organisations. She has been a radio presenter on BCfm, and a course tutor.

In 2018 she was instrumental in devising and delivering Votes for Women 100, a programme of commemorative events by the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network in partnership with Bristol M Shed and others. She also campaigned and raised funds for a Blue Plaque for the Bristol and West of England Women’s Suffrage Society.

She is on the steering committee of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network, and is also a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Society of Authors, and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

She is currently working on the fourth full-length Dan Foster Mystery, and a biography of suffrage campaigner Millicent Browne. Lucienne was born in Wolverhampton and now lives in Bristol.

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#BookReview The Mathematical Bridge by Jim Kelly @AllisonandBusby

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the mathematical bridgeAbout the Book

Cambridge, 1940. It is the first winter of the war and the snow is falling thick and fast. A college porter, crossing the ancient Mathematical Bridge on his nightly rounds, is startled to hear a child’s cries for help coming from the icy river below. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke is summoned by police whistle and commandeers a punt in a desperate attempt to save the child, but the flood carries the boy away into the night. By dawn there is no trace of the victim.

The boy was Sean Flynn, part of a group of Irish Catholic children evacuated from a poor London parish. When an explosion causes damage at a factory engaged in war work and the bombers leave an Irish Republican slogan at the scene, Brooke questions whether there could be a connection between the two events. As more riddles come to light, he begins to close in on a killer, but there is one last twist: it seems that Sean Flynn had his own startling secret.

Format: Hardcover (352 pp)                  Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 21st February 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Mathematical Bridge on Goodreads

My Review

In The Mathematical Bridge, the author once again creates a vivid sense of what it must have been like to live in wartime Cambridge with familiar views transformed by the addition of rooftop observation posts and searchlights to detect enemy bombers. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke’s home life reflects the daily experience of families during wartime. He and his wife, Claire, are awaiting news of their son serving with the British Expeditionary Force and his pregnant daughter, Joy, is anxiously awaiting news of her submariner husband. Alongside this uncertainty, there are long night shifts, blackouts, air raid warnings and rationing to contend with, not to mention the threat of attacks by the IRA. One of the many things I enjoyed about the book is this mixture of the personal and the political, the local and the global.

Another theme, as in the first book in the series, is that of darkness and light. Eden Brooke himself is the most obvious manifestation of this. The damage to his vision and the insomnia caused by his traumatic experiences in the desert during the First World War make the night time streets of Cambridge a sanctuary. It’s one he shares with fellow “nighthawks”, such as cafe owner Rose King, expert in circadian rhythms Aldiss, or night porter  Doric, ‘condemned to live life out of the light, at home in the shadowy world of the college after dark’. There are also some wonderfully atmospheric night time scenes such as the search of the drained River Cam.

However, although Brooke may welcome the darkness in a physical sense, his moral and professional impulse is to seek just the opposite. ‘Joining the Borough, on his return from the desert, had offered an opportunity to tilt the world towards light, and away from the darkness, even by small fractions of a degree.’

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The Mathematical Bridge, Cambridge

As in The Great Darkness, the author makes the reader feel they are alongside Brooke as he travels the streets of Cambridge in the course of his investigations, crossing the various bridges over the River Cam, including the famous Mathematical Bridge of the book’s title. And I’m sure I’m not the only reader who reacted with joy when they opened the book and found there was a map in the front.

In the enthralling final chapters, there are dramatic events, surprising revelations, split second life and death decisions to be taken and some poignant moments. At one point, Brooke observes, ‘He didn’t like the sense that fate was contriving a circular narrative, a story that was being drawn back to the beginning’. As a reader, I can only disagree (sorry, Eden) because I loved the way the various storylines were skilfully brought together. Oh, and a word of advice for Eden – listen to your wife when it comes to making assumptions about the identity of a murderer in future.

I loved The Great Darkness and this follow-up certainly didn’t disappoint. The Mathematical Bridge would be perfect for those mourning the demise of TV’s Foyle’s War or for fans of James Runcie’s ‘Grantchester Mysteries’ series. Readers who enjoyed The Great Darkness and have read, or are looking forward to reading, The Mathematical Bridge will be pleased to learn (as I was) that a third book in the series is due to be published early next year. It already has a place on my wishlist.

I received a review copy courtesy of Allison & Busby.

In three words: Atmospheric, compelling, assured

Try something similar: Nucleus (Tom Wilde #2) by Rory Clements (read my review here)

Jim KellyAbout the Author

Jim Kelly was born in 1957 and is the son of a Scotland Yard detective. He went to university in Sheffield, later training and working as a journalist on publications including the Financial Times. His first book, The Water Clock, was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award and he has since won a CWA Dagger in the Library and the New Angle Prize for Literature. He lives in Ely.

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