Review: Murder at Church Lodge: the first in an absolutely gripping new small village cosy crime series

Murder at Church Lodge: the first in an absolutely gripping new small village cosy crime series by Greg Mosse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Maisie Cooper is living in Paris when she is given a telephone message from her older brother Stephen, he's in trouble and he needs to see her. She promptly travels back to England to see him. only to discover that he is dead, drowned in a neighbour's swimming pool.

At the funeral the people in the village rally around, but are they all a bit too keen to emphasis what good friends they were with Stephen? Also there are two members of Special Branch at the funeral - why?

This was quite an enjoyable mystery with plenty of red herrings along the way to keep things interesting. But I had three gripes. First there was a lot of telling rather than showing which made it feel a bit remote from the action. Second, I get it was set in the 1970s but it felt like the author tried to jam-pack everything about the 1970s into the book (oil crisis, electricity cuts, Maxwell House instant coffee, decimalisation etc), I get it no need to keep harping on about it. And thirdly, the romance between Maisie and the boy she kissed once over a decade ago was so implausible as to be ludicrous, at least show them getting to know one another a bit before declaring love!

Otherwise, it was quite fun reading a book set in the 1970s, with all the limitations that entails (my goodness how did we live without mobile phones and the internet) and I would be interested to see how this series develops.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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