Tag: Reviews

#BookReview The Room of the Dead (Betty Church Mystery 2) by M.R.C. Kasasian @HoZ_Books

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The Room of the DeadAbout the Book

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There’s the elderly Mr Fern who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin’s thirteenth birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.

When a bomb is dropped on a residential street, both peace and quiet are broken and it seems the war has finally reached Sackwater. But Betty cannot stop the Hun, however hard she tries. So when the body of one of the bomb victims is found stretched out like an angel on Sackwater’s beach, Betty concentrates on finding the enemy much closer to home…

Format: Hardcover (432 pages)   Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 11th July 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

Find The Room of the Dead (Betty Church Mystery #2) on Goodreads

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My Review

The Room of the Dead is the second in the author’s Betty Church Mystery series. True to form, I’m reading the series out of order, having read the first and third books – Betty Church And The Suffolk Vampire and The Ghost Tree – before this one. However, at least I can reassure readers new to the series that The Room of the Dead works perfectly well as a standalone. There are brief references to events in the first book, but nothing that would spoil your enjoyment of this one.

The book sees the return of the mostly hapless collection of individuals who constitute the Sackwater police force: Constable ‘Dodo’ Chivers (as barmy as her name suggests), Constable Box, Constable Bank-Anthony (‘Bantony’), Constable Rivers, identical twins Constables Lysander and Algernon Grinder-Snipes, Sergeant Briggs (‘Brigsy’) and the perpetual thorn in Betty’s side, Inspector Sharkey (referred to as ‘Old Scrapie’, although not within his hearing).

You’ll have deduced by now that the author has a penchant for giving his characters unusual names such as Simnal Cranditch and Garrison Orchard. And if you’ve read any of the author’s other books you’ll be prepared for the frequent puns, wordplay and quirky chapter titles. As a John Buchan fan, my favourite was ‘The Twenty-Nine Steps’, although where the other ten went I’ve no idea!

When it comes to solving cases, once again Betty demonstrates she has more brains in her little finger than all of her officers put together. And she’s going to need all that brain power as the investigation gets increasingly complex.  Fans of the author’s Gower Street Detective series, will be pleased to see March Middleton, Betty’s godmother, turn up to lend a hand and demonstrate the miraculous powers of observation and deduction she learned from the Gower Street detective himself, Sidney Grice.  I love Betty as a character and was delighted at – hold the front page – a hint of romance in the air… or among the sand dunes to be more precise.

The Room of the Dead is engagingly silly at times and some readers may tire of the frequent fun poked at the Suffolk accent, but it’s entertaining nonetheless and the solution to the mystery turns out to be slightly darker than you may have expected.

I received a review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Engaging, humorous, ingenious

Try something similar: The Custard Corpses by M. J. Porter

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M R C KasasianAbout the Author

M.R.C. Kasasian was raised in Lancashire. He has had careers as varied as a factory hand, wine waiter, veterinary assistant, fairground worker and dentist. He is the author of the much loved Gower Street Detective series, five books featuring personal detective Sidney Grice and his ward March Middleton, as well as two other Betty Church mysteries, Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire and The Room of the Dead. He lives with his wife, in Suffolk in the summer and in Malta in the winter.(Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

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My Week in Books – 5th December 2021

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I published my review of light-hearted crime novel A Three Dog Problem by S. J .Bennett.

Tuesday – I shared my review of historical novel The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal as part of the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading. 

Thursday – I shared my Five Favourite November Reads. 

Friday – I published my review of historical thriller Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray, another book for the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge. 

Saturday – I took part in the #6DegreesOfSeparation meme and also, as part of the blog tour, shared a promo post for The Lost Girl in Paris by Jina Bacarr.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

These DaysThese Days by Lucy Caldwell (ARC, Faber & Faber via Readers First)

Two sisters, four nights, one city.

April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war – so far. Over the next two months, it’s going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished.

Many won’t make it through, and no one who does will remain unchanged.

Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey – one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman – as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.

The Manningtree WitchesThe Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore (Granta)

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow.

In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes.

But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins, a mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, takes over The Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge.

The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended.

They Both Die at the EndThey Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Simon & Schuster)

On September 5th, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: they’re going to die today.

Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but for different reasons, they’re both looking for a new friend on their End Day. 

The good news: there’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure – to live a lifetime in a single day.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Room of the Dead by M. R. C. Kasasian
  • Blog Blitz/Book Review: Sherlock Holmes & the Singular Affair by M. K. Wiseman 
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Visitors by Caroline Scott 
  • Book Review: Where God Does Not Walk by Luke McCallin
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Golden Girls’ Getaway by Judy Leigh
  • Book Review: The Lost Girl in Paris by Jina Bacarr