Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
When a mystery parcel arrives at Sherlock Tomes bookshop in small-town Havelock North, New Zealand, husband-and-wife owners Garth and Eloise (and their petrified pooch, Stevie) are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl.
Intrigued by the puzzling, bookish clues the two ex-cops are soon tangled in a web of crime, drugs, and floral decapitations, while endeavouring to pull off the international celebrity book launch of the century.
With their beloved shop on the chopping block and the sinister suspect who forced them to run away from Blighty reemerging from the shadows, have Garth and Eloise Sherlock finally met their Moriarty?
I hear a rumour that the joint authors of this book are also the joint owners of a rather quirky little bookshop in their native New Zealand, so no guesses where the idea for the two main characters of this novel came from. Gareth and Eloise own Sherlock Tomes, a bookshop in Havelock, a small town in New Zealand that has one of those "eccentric English village" "how is anybody still alive here" vibes that lovers of cosy, eccentric, small village style mysteries are going to feel right at home with. As an added bonus these two also own a "petrified pooch", Stevie - petrified as in frightened / not preserved...
Meeting the expectation set by the blurb, this is definitely from the chatty, slightly arch sense of silly fun side of the spectrum, despite the cold case of a missing schoolgirl. Cue the mayhem as they try to organise a celebrity book launch that nobody is supposed to know about, try and keep their shop alive and solvent, all while dealing with a tangled web of crime, drugs and floral decapitations. And shouting where to find books to their loyal and slightly dotty customer base. In fact, the whole thing is on the slightly dotty side. The dialogue is of the chatter style, the characters mostly of the "slightly out of breath" type, and it's all a bit of fun.
I'm going to take a not too wild stab at the idea that this is going to be an ongoing series. Just the ticket for lovers of this type of humorous, personal, and quite quirky cosy crime fiction.
Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by Australians and New Zealanders on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment