The Bookshop Murder by Merryn AllinghamMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Flora Steele was adopted by her aunt after the early deaths of her parents. With plans to travel, her intentions were thwarted when her aunt became ill and died a few years later. Now Flora is stuck in Abbeymead, a small Sussex town, running a book shop which barely breaks even.
One morning Flora opens the shop to discover the dead body of a young man in among the second-hand bookshelves. The man turns out to be an Australian staying at the Priory Hotel, a former stately home. Being a small town, rumour is rife and soon Flora sees a catastrophic dip in sales as the locals mutter about ghosts and curses. Nevertheless, the police view the man's death as simply a tragic heart attack and are unwilling to investigate further.
Determined to save her livelihood, Flora enlists the help of local reclusive writer Jack Carrington, who frequently orders research books from the shop, to prove that his death was no accident. The victim was apparently the grandson of the former owner of the Priory when it was a private residence and rumour suggests he was interrogating the staff looking for some sort of treasure.
While Flora is impulsive and liable to jump to conclusions, based on little or no evidence, Jack, as a former journalist, takes a more measured approach.
This was pleasant enough, perhaps I had too high expectations of this (for some reason I thought the author was a Golden Age writer, not a contemporary writer). Flora careers around suspecting everyone in the village, the villain takes the trouble to make a full confession and gloat over his evil to Flora, there's a handy boy who gives Jack the crucial information, and everything relies on a whole lot of strange coincidences.
Overall, I will definitely read the next book - I note the average rating increase over the series - but I'm not sure I would have paid for this one.
Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment