Osman does the hardest thing in this genre and I have no idea how. He is properly funny and properly sad in the same chapter, and I cannot think of many writers who manage either, let alone both at once. What keeps me coming back to this series is not the puzzle, it is the people. Five books in and he still has not run out of warmth for them, which I find genuinely impressive. I went in expecting to be entertained and came out slightly emotional about a group of pensioners.
This has the cleverest twist I have read in years, and I say that as someone who usually guesses. I did not come close. What I loved most is the nerve of it. Hannah tells the whole thing as a case file, which by rights should not work at all, and I spent the first few pages faintly sceptical and the rest of it completely gripped. I finished it and immediately wanted to talk to somebody about it, which for me is the real test of a mystery.
'The twist is perfection. I think it's just about the cleverest thing I've ever read' Gillian McAllister
'If you think there's nothing new in crime, this is the book to read. Truly original.' Stuart Turton, bestselling author of The 71/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
'This joyous adventure is one of Sophie Hannah's very best books' Alex Michaelides
'The dog lover's Liane Moriarty, the British Gillian Flynn' Tony Parsons
You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm…
Thirty-six books in and Agatha Raisin is still thoroughly unpleasant to everybody, which is exactly why I keep reading her. I came to this one half expecting it to have gone soft, and it has not. What I find genuinely remarkable is R.W. Green. He has been writing these since Beaton died and he has her tone precisely, which cannot have been an easy thing to take on, and I think he deserves far more credit for it than he gets. I still laugh in the same places.
Beloved New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton's cranky, crafty Agatha Raisin―the star of her own hit T.V. series―is back on the case again.
When a series of deaths within the small Cotswolds birdwatching community begins to unravel her village, Agatha and her team at Raisin Investigators are certain there has been foul play involved. Now, they must dig up decades' worth of tempestuous relationships and simmering secrets among the birdwatching enthusiasts of the village in order to prevent any further deaths.
But with Agatha's own relationship with John Glass on the rocks after he is called away on his…
Bob and Shirley run a country pub in Britain's safest village. They also solve murders.
Shirley is right about everything, which Bob finds difficult. Expect excessive beer, gin and cake, a ploughman's lunch bigger than the plate, and an alcoholic cat called Sambuca. An outrageously funny, gloriously British murder mystery for anyone who likes their detectives bickering.
