Matthew J. Costello

...a gem!

This was fun. A murder mystery, with a difference. Sort of Midsummer Murders meets Jesse Stone. The yank in the sleepy English village puts his finger on it when he notes that, 'sweet old Cherringham maybe not so cosy and innocent.' And thus a series is born. Ah! Those deceptive English villages!
Jack is a retired New York detective who's made home a canal boat in England, a dream he and his deceased wife had planned. Sarah is a single mother, returned with her children to her home show more village after a messy divorce. The death of Sarah's best friend Sammi unites these two as they search for the reason behind Sammi's demise.
The writing is vivid and I had no trouble visualizing Jack's boat moored at the canal, feeling with sympathy Jack's careful driving down those English country lanes surrounded by hedges, those lazy English pubs, and rambling paths alongside rivers.
40 minutes to an hour and you've read a smart short story. With more episodes to follow over a year, it's a monthly gift to yourself or someone else. A serial, much like those that some magazines used to run years ago. An older, simple concept that plays well with eBooks.

A NetGalley ARC show less

Sir Harry Mortimer with His Majesty’s Diplomatic Corps and Kat Reilly with the State Department met at a New Year’s Eve reception in the British Embassy in Cairo. After a whirlwind romance, the couple has married, Kat has left the State Department and now is about to view Harry's ancestral home of Mydworth Manor in 1929, Sussex, England.

I loved this couple from first introduction. Their chemistry sizzled off the pages and it was a delight to read their enchantment and respect for one show more another.

I thought it was easy to solve the mystery of the manor but the simplicity or complexity of the mystery is irrelevant when the storytelling is a pleasure to read. The humor adds its own sparkles especially as Kat appears on the manor's doorstep in muddy and tattered clothes to meet elegantly dressed and proper Lady Lavinia, Harry’s Aunt Lavinia. The twinkling of humor continues as the reader learns of each ensemble made available to Kat until she's able to retrieve her own luggage.

I'm looking forward to reading more of the "Mydworth Mysteries" as the introduction was such a joy. show less

Another interesting mystery has now become a part of the Mydworth Mysteries series. This time, our intrepid investigators Kat Reilly and Sir Harry Mortimer are looking for a runaway girl – well, since she’s twenty-one, I guess she’s a runaway woman.

Lizzie Spence has been taking dancing lessons for years and years – and there is a talent agent who keeps telling her how good she is – he tells her she is a natural. The agent tells her that he can get her auditions and will set show more everything up for her – all she has to do it get to London for the auditions. Since Lizzie knows her parents would never approve, she decides to sneak off to London and leave her parents a note explaining.

"I’m running away from home, she thought. Me! Timid little Lizzie. Lizzie in the
corner, Lizzie head down, Lizzie never say “boo” to a goose? Nobody will believe
it!"

When they haven’t heard from Lizzie in several weeks, Glenys Spence, Lizzie’s mother, approached Nicola Green of the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service) to ask for assistance in assuring that her daughter was safe. She’s not asking them to bring her home, just to assure that she is safe. Nicola, of course, asks Kat and Sir Harry to investigate.

Their investigation naturally begins in Mydworth at the dance class and rapidly shifts to London where they enlist the help of several friends – particularly Alfie who was Harry’s batman during the war. Alfie has many contacts – including many among the less than law-abiding citizens of London. Kat and Harry query their upper-crust friends while Alfie works his underworld contacts and it isn’t long before they realize what a mess Lizzy has gotten herself into.

It will take all of their wiles and a lot of skill and luck to rescue Lizzie. Can they do it? You’ll just have to read this fun tale for yourself to find out.

The book is filled with banter (like Nick and Nora Charles), quick wit, cunning and, of course, the romance between Sir Harry and Kat. I definitely recommend this book and this series. show less

Yet another delightful entry in the Mydworth Mysteries series and as always, it is well-written and well-plotted. The main characters Sir Harry Mortimer and his lovely wife, the former Kat Reilly of New York City, are on a work/pleasure trip to the French Riviera. Both Harry and Kat have been operatives for their governments and Harry still does occasional jobs for a small, discrete branch of the British government, so it is no surprise that Harry has been asked to travel to France to show more debrief an agent, Wyndham Groves, who has just returned from an undercover assignment in North Africa. The debriefing should take only a few hours and Harry and Kat intend to spend some time alone enjoying the Cote d’Azur. Ah! The best-laid plans …

Their trip on Le Train Bleu was fun with their meeting of American con artist Roscoe Burns. Kat and Harry had a witty encounter with the man and I hope we’ll see him pop up in future books.

As soon as Harry finished with his debriefing, things started to pop. Harry’s Aunt Lavinia was also spending the season on the French Riviera with some friends and she invited Harry and Kat to attend a huge party. There was, an ulterior motive for the invitation, it seems a friend of Lavinia’s, Percy Porter, is being blackmailed and Lavinia wants Harry and Kat to discover and stop the culprits. When the blackmailer demands more and more money and Harry and Kat discover a seasoned criminal is involved, the task becomes more dangerous. While they don’t think the criminal is the mastermind, they have no clue who is. When the culprit(s) are caught and all is revealed, Harry and Kat are shocked.

You’ll love all of the red-herrings, false trails, and chases nestled in such vivid descriptions of the time and place you’ll feel you are right there with Harry and Kat. I love these books because the mystery is always excellent, but they are also filled with wit, humor, and fun banter between Harry and Kat. You absolutely can’t go wrong with one of these lovely, quick-to-read, fun mysteries. I can hardly wait for the next book, A Distant Voice, to release on 7/30/21 – and it would be really good fun if Roscoe and Wyndham showed up in it. show less