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Articles by Robin Agnew
Celeste Connally Invites Readers to "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord"
Celeste Connally’s debut historical Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord is an entertaining, hard to stop reading mash-up of romance, adventure, a big swoony ball, and a socially sensitive mystery. She introduces a fierce new character, Lady Petra Forsyth, who has just announced to society at large that she plans to remain unmarried. She’s greeted with derision and disbelief, and she handles it all beautifully. This is a wonderful series kickoff.
"Glory Be" a Smart Debut from Danielle Arceneaux
Danielle Arceneaux’s first novel, Glory Be, is a knockout. Glory Broussard is an older, heavier, African American woman living in Lafayette, Louisiana. She’s sometimes obnoxious, but also fearless and brave. She’s one of the more interesting and fully realized characters I’ve encountered in a long while. She’s not all good, she’s not all bad—in short, she’s human. By the end of her first adventure, you’ll be a little in love with her.
Julia Kelly's Debut Mystery Takes Flight With "A Traitor in Whitehall"
Julia Kelly wows with her debut historical mystery A Traitor in Whitehall. Kelly is a veteran of romance and straight historical fiction, so this is far from a freshman effort. The first in the Parisian Orphan series, features Evelyne Redfern, a young woman working the munitions line in wartime London.
Colleen Cambridge et le meurte
Colleen Cambridge, the mystery pen name of Colleen Gleason, brings readers a new series this spring, beginning with Mastering the Art of French Murder. In it we meet Tabitha Knight, an American in postwar Paris who just happens to find herself neighbor to a talented Le Cordon Bleu student named... Julia Child. The two expats hit it off, bonding over their love of the City of Lights and all things delicious.
Elly Griffiths and Saying Farewell to Ruth Galloway
Elly Griffiths is wrapping up her now iconic and beloved Ruth Galloway series with The Last Remains. The series, which began in 2009 with The Crossing Places, features forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, her detecting partner (and sometimes lover) DCI Harry Nelson, and their evolving relationship over 15 books, many years, and several cases.
Mystery Scene's Solicited Advice from Jesse Q. Sutanto
Jesse Q. Sutanto has written what is so far one of my favorite reads of 2023. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is hilarious, sweet, and anchored by the utterly fabulous character of Vera Wong, who owns a tiny tea store in San Francisco. Sutanto has written books for young adults and middle grade readers, as well as adults, and her book Dial A for Aunties is being adapted into a film with Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off the Boat and Always Be My Maybe) for Netflix.
Jacqueline Winspear Introduces a New Heroine in "The White Lady"
Photo by Holly Clark English writer Jacqueline Winspear is a force in the mysterious universe. If you’ve read and enjoyed her Maisie Dobbs books, or her standalone The Care and Management of Lies (2014), or simply sit down to read this interview, it’s obvious why she’s been influential.
Gemma and Duncan Are Back in Deborah Crombie's "A Killing of Innocents"
Deborah Crombie’s 19th Gemma James & Duncan Comrie novel, A Killing of Innocents, finds Duncan catching a knife crime case and Gemma running a knife crimes unit in London. The series, rich is setting, character, and plot, continues to develop and the books are compelling, intelligent reads. I found this installment especially crisp, well written and hard to put down.
Jennifer Chow's Yale Yee Series Delivers Treachery, Tea, and Treats at the Night Market
Photo credit Julie Daniels Author Jennifer J. Chow introduced mystery lovers to Death by Bubble Tea, the first in her series featuring Yale Yee, a young woman who finds herself reluctantly running a food stall at the local Asian night market after losing her bookstore gig. Together with her Hong Kong cousin Celine, Yale serves up delicious dishes and bubble tea with a side of sleuthing when one of their customers dies from poisoning.
Vanessa Riley on Writing a Black Woman in Regency England
Vanessa Riley’s Murder in Westminster is the first in a new series set in Regency London. The central character, Lady Abigail Worthing, is a smart, headstrong, woman married to a high-level naval officer and like many heroines before her seems uninterested in following all of society's rules. Unlike many before her, though, she's also a mixed-race Black woman. Fans of the genre will find much to enjoy in Riley's well-constructed mystery and its sparkling main character.
Kayte Nunn, Fall Issue #173, Larry Beinhart, Catherine Coulter, Craig Sisterson
Dark Deeds Down Under Anthology Spotlights Australian and New Zealand Crime Fiction Mystery Scene's Craig Sisterson recently interviewed Australian author Emma Viskic for our Fall Issue #173, but he has many more Down Under writers he'd love to share with fellow crime and thriller lovers.
Kayte Nunn Explores Motherhood and Mystery in "The Only Child"
The Only Child is set in Puget Sound in both 1949 and 2013, and focuses on what was in the past a mother and baby house run by nuns, and in the present is a house being rehabbed by a mother and daughter as a hotel. The daughter, Frankie Gray, is a cop, and though she hasn’t yet begun her new job in Puget Sound, she becomes involved when a tiny skeleton is found on the property. The book is both haunting and relevant. Robin Agnew for Mystery Scene: Why set the book on Puget Sound?
Harini Nagendra and "The Bangalore Detectives Club"
Harini Nagendra’s first novel, The Bangalore Detectives Club, is set in India in the 1920s in a moment when it is on the cusp of independence. Her main character Kaveri Murthy is a new bride, just out of school and living with her husband for the first time. Kaveri's passions include mathematics and Sherlock Holmes, two interests that along with her penchant for discovering clues, lead her to some amateur sleuthing in Nagendra's lovely and atmospheric debut novel.
Mystery Scene
I haven’t dipped into Alexander McCall Smith in quite a while, and after reading his new Isabel Dalhousie book, I am seriously questioning that decision. I absolutely loved this gentle, beautifully written and felt novel. While it’s not really a mystery, it has some mysterious events in it. It follows the life and musings of Isabel Dalhousie, the editor of a philosophy review, mother of two young children, and beloved wife of Jamie.
Alice Henderson Steps Into Her First Mystery With "A Solitude of Wolverines"
When the protagonist of A Solitude of Wolverines, Alex Carter, is forced to flee a shooting, she ends up in a remote area of Montana studying the elusive and rare wolverine. Author Alice Henderson is already an established horror and fantasy writer with an apocalyptic series, Skyfire Saga, and novelizations of popular shows like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, but A Solitude if Wolverines marks the first in her new wilderness mystery series.
Mystery Scene
If you like Carl Hiaasen, you know his political bent and point of view, so it won’t be a shock to see that one of our most gifted satirists is taking on President Donald Trump. The president is not referred to by name in the novel, but rather by the code (I imagine fictional) assigned to him by the Secret Service: Mastodon. Along with our president, Hiaasen has turned his laser focus to Palm Beach society, an almost as easy—and juicy—target.
Mystery Scene
While Bailey Cates’s Witches and Wedding Cake is the ninth in her Magical Bakery series, it was the first for me, and I appreciated that I could slide into the narrative effortlessly. Cates has included an almost overwhelming array of cozy mystery elements—magic, baking, a cute animal (the main character carries her dog familiar in her purse), a book club, and the ultimate romantic ingredient—a wedding. The good news is that she manages to blend them all deliciously.
Mystery Scene
Juliet Blackwell’s The Last Curtain Call is a blast of a read, as ghostbusting home renovator Mel Turner takes on an old movie palace as well as her mother’s childhood home in San Francisco. It’s hard to inject humor into this kind of a mystery because in order to be effective, humor needs a bit of a satirical edge, but in a cozy that edge can’t be too sharp or biting. Blackwell gets it just right, and I selected this book for review on the basis of the humor on the very first page.
Mystery Scene
Mindy Mejia’s Strike Me Down is a cleverly structured book set inside the world of kickboxing. The central character, Logan Russo, is one of those people who are insanely charismatic, someone who never gives up on a fight and inspires others to do the same. Think Oprah at her peak—if she had been a kickboxer, millions of housewives would have given kickboxing a try.
Mystery Scene
Dead in the Doorway, the second book in a nascent series by the prolific Diane Kelly, finds her Nashville house-flipper protagonist Whitney Whitaker on the way to her latest project accompanied by her cat, Sawdust, only to discover a slight hitch—there’s a dead body blocking the door. The corpse turns out to be that of a neighbor, and while Whitney is freaked out at having discovered a body, she still has to get on with her house flip.
Mystery Scene
Martin Walker isn’t writing mysteries so much as lifestyle stories—there is certainly a mystery in this novel, but it’s no more and no less important than wine, chickens, great food, swimming lessons, dogs, and music. Benoît “Bruno” Corrèges is the chief of police in tiny St. Denis, in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. He is a lifelong resident, and his connections to the town are many and varied. He is as familiar with the croissant maker as with the local laws governing livestock.
Mystery Scene
Ella Shane is an opera singer, known as a “trouser diva” because she sings men’s roles. As Kathleen Marple Kalb’s sparkling debut novel opens in 1899 New York, Ella’s singing Romeo to an overeager Juliet, but unfortunately Juliet actually dies at the end of the penultimate scene. And from there, A Fatal Finale hits the ground running, with lively storytelling, a great milieu, and wonderful characters.
Mystery Scene
I’ve long been a fan of Mary Logue, author of the Claire Watkins mysteries. I think it’s her background as a poet that lends her books a concise crispness not always to be found in today’s overly long novels. While this book clocks in at a little over 200 pages, it’s packed with character and action from the first page to the last. It’s the story of Brigid Reardon, who escapes the Irish potato famine in 1880 and heads to America with her brother Seamus.
Mystery Scene
Mousse and Murder, written under the pseudonym Elizabeth Logan, is a snappy, well-written taste of Alaskan life. As the book begins, main character Charlie Cooke has taken over the Bearclaw Diner from her mother in tiny Elkview, Alaska, and has just had a whopper of a fight with the holdover chef. She doesn’t want to tell her mother, who is enjoying her well-earned retirement on a cruise ship, but comes to regret her duplicity (never lie to your mother!).
Mystery Scene
In Buried to the Brim Jenn McKinlay appears to be wrapping up her Hat Shop mystery series, although she adds “for now” in an opening note. If it is indeed the last in the series, it’s a fitting coda to Scarlett Parker's adventures in the millinery trade. She’s engaged to the dishy Harrison (Harry to you), and happily managing her busy London hat shop with cousin Viv, who makes the fascinators they sell.
Mystery Scene
Beginning Sherry Harris’ Garage Sale series with installment eight, Sell Low, Sweet Harriet, I was instantly comfortable with former military spouse Sarah Winston, a divorcée who lives near the base, volunteers at the base thrift shop, and runs garage and estate sales for a living. While the further I read, the more I wanted to know the story of Sarah’s divorce, I was still comfortable with her current situation.
Mystery Scene
If you can be drunk on a novel, I was drunk on this one. Four hundred and 40 pages of an epic, delicious, incredibly true, unbelievably brave account of the life of Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, a fierce fighter for the French resistance. Nancy, an Australian, left home at age 16 and ended up in France, writing for Hearst, as the world danced closer and closer to World War II. She saw some Nazi brutality up close and early on, and it made her determined to fight them.
Mystery Scene
The seventh Silver Rush mystery takes series character Inez Stannert out of the mining towns and gambling dens where the series originated to the heart of 1881 San Francisco. Pianist Inez has opened a music store that also specializes in “Oriental curiosities,” curated by her shy but knowledgeable employee Mr. Hee. As the story opens, it is the holiday season and Inez and her ward, Antonia, are at the opera house watching a concert given by Theia Drake, the so-called “Golden Songbird” of the West.
New Parisian Thrills with Cara Black
Cara Black is author of the long-running and beloved Aimée Leduc series, set in contemporary Paris. Her new novel, Three Hours in Paris, takes place in 1940, in Nazi-occupied Paris, and is an historical thriller that’s impossible to put down. Robin Agnew for Mystery Scene: All of your books are set in Paris, but what called to you and said, "Hey, wartime Paris"? Why that time period? Cara Black: I found a revealing footnote in a history book of wartime Paris that shouted out to me.
Mystery Scene
This is a luscious object of a book, crammed full of gorgeous, dripping, fulsome prose, redolent of smell and touch and atmosphere. Jess Kidd brings a nasty, dirty, frequently depraved version of Victorian London to life in Things in Jars, which comes down to a simple little story about a woman in search of a mermaid in a box, accompanied on her search by a ghost.
Mystery Scene
Elizabeth Penney’s Hems & Homicide is first in a new series set in tiny Blueberry Cove, Maine. Central character Iris Buckley lives with the person who raised her, her Grammie, and is planning to open a store selling vintage textiles and handmade aprons with a vintage feel.
Thomas Thompson and What Makes True Crime So Great
Recently I reread a favorite true crime classic, Thomas Thompson’s Blood and Money, a book I loved recommending when I owned Aunt Agatha's bookstore. I first picked it up as a teenager, as a friend’s mother had known the victim on the horse show circuit. As I read—indeed, inhaled this book—much of which I’d forgotten as I first read it in 1976, I began thinking about why this book is such a classic.
Mystery Scene
Set in 1919 Paris, the 11th in Charles Todd’s Bess Crawford series finds the war at an end, but the effects on soldiers and nurses from the front still being felt. Bess feels at a loose end as she doesn’t want to leave nursing, but there seems to be a surplus of nurses after the war.
Mystery Scene
The prolific Amanda Flower has written seven series with an eighth due in January 2020. Several of them, including her latest, Toxic Toffee, are Amish-centric, which seems appropriate for a traditional detective novel. Because of the lack of technology in that world, deductive reasoning comes more to the fore for the detective.
Mystery Scene
PI Aimée LeDuc hits the streets of Paris again and this time it’s personal. Aimée, in the course of Cara Black’s 20 books, has acquired a baby (Chloé), and an awkward relationship with her long-absent mother (thanks to Chloé). Her mother has turned out to be a doting grandmother.
Mystery Scene
This is a blast of a read, pure story adrenaline. The two main characters, Roan West and Melicent Tilpin, are psychometrists, people who can read the memories in objects with their hands. Roan, an antiques dealer, has been working as a psychometrist for years, while Melicent has only newly discovered her talent after a flea market watch “speaks to her” and turns out to be worth over a million dollars.
Christine Trent, author of the Florence Nightingale Mystery Series
I read Christine Trent’s first Florence Nightingale book, No Cure for the Dead, and loved her fresh take on a great historical figure as well as her mad skills at crafting a traditional detective novel. The first one had a bit of a goth feel, the second plunges Florence into the heart of Victorian London, with all it’s plusses and minuses. Robin Agnew for Mystery Scene: I love both Florence Nightingale your character, and Florence Nightingale the person. How did you settle on writing about her?
Mystery Scene
There are some historical stories that get under your skin, and each time you read an account, you hope for a different ending. If only Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots were not beheaded, Prince Albert didn’t die early…you get the idea. In The Poison Bed, I encountered a new-to-me story, which is one of those I will now always hope unfolded differently. Elizabeth Fremantle has taken the love story of Lady Frances Howard and Robert Carr in 1615 England and made it indelible.
Mystery Scene
Live and Let Pie is the ninth outing in Ellie Alexander’s series set in charming Ashland, Oregon, where Juliet “Jules” Capshaw and her recently remarried mother run Torte, a bakeshop. Jules has the quaint idea that everyone should just get along, but small-town politics and relationships don’t always run true, and one day two girls out for a swim discover a human skull in the lake, and soon after an old curmudgeon named Edgar is found murdered.
Mystery Scene
Those of you who love Elly Griffith’s series character Ruth Galloway, snuggle up—you’re going to love the standalone novel The Stranger Diaries every bit as much. The same voice that brings Ruth to life—the funny, intelligent, eminently readable voice of Griffiths—is also on full display in this wonderful novel. The story centers on Clare Cassidy, a divorced mom who teaches at a high school in a British town.
Mystery Scene
Julia Buckley’s Death Waits in the Dark is the fourth in her Writer’s Apprentice series, which has an offbeat, but appealing premise. Lena London is the apprentice to well-known Camilla Graham, whose work sounds like a combination of Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney, with a long list of titles to match. The two women seem to share a sort of mind meld as they work together plotting Camilla’s novels, both of them living in Camilla’s lovely Victorian house in Blue Lake, Indiana.
New York author Tim O'Mara edits anthology "Down to the River" to raise awareness and funds for river conservation
Tim O’Mara’s first novel, Sacrifice Fly, came out in 2012 and I was instantly smitten by his main character, teacher, and accidental investigator Raymond Donne. With a nice mix of humor and grit and a very authentic sense of place, O'Mara wrote a wonderful first novel.
Mystery Scene
Bree Baker’s No Good Tea Goes Unpunished begins with a wedding, but unfortunately the groom is discovered soon after, dead in the surf. Series character Everly Swan, a tea shop owner, organized her childhood friend Judy’s beach nuptials, which clearly failed to end happily ever after.
Mystery Scene
This is the first in a historical series from Victoria Hamilton, set in 1810 London where our heroine, Emmaline, kicks things off by stabbing a child molester in the ass. A society lady, Emmaline also works nights as the “Avengeress.” She rescues children from abusive homes where they are working as servants. Emmaline is part of a group that calls themselves the Crones, and they have a rescue network across London.
Ten books in and only getting better
Hank Phillippi Ryan's debut Charlotte McNally novel, Prime Time, about a television reporter chasing down a big (and dangerous) story, earned the author an Agatha Award for best first novel in 2007. The Emmy Award-winning investigative television reporter for WHD-TV in Boston, hasn't slowed down since, penning another ten of her smart, socially incisive, female-powered novels to date, including five Jane Ryland thrillers, three more McNally books, and her first standalone, Trust Me (2018).
Mystery Scene
First down the aisle was Liz Mugavero’s Murder, She Meowed. Mugavero’s series heroine, Stan Connor, owns an organic pet food boutique in tiny Frog Ledge, Connecticut. She and her bar-owner intended, Jake, are about to make it official, and she’s horrified to learn that her sister is planning a racy bachelorette party.
Mystery Scene
I saw the cover for this book and was completely intrigued and also certain it was a first novel. Nope. It’s number ten in, if this installment is anything to go by, a rich and multilayered series about Mattie Winston, a woman employed as a death investigator, a medical examiner charged with investigating any suspicious, unexplained, or violent deaths. Mattie is the wife of a cop, stepmother of a teenager, and mother of a toddler.
Mystery Scene
This is the sixth novel featuring psychic private eye David Randall, a somewhat free spirit who lives in a boarding house full of other free spirits, a couple of them psychic like David himself. What I call the character matrix—the array of characters surrounding the central character—is a rich and dense one in this novel, at times almost too dense for a reader joining this series six books in.
Mystery Scene
I confess, as a bookseller I sold many, many copies of Joanne Fluke’s books (and have even cooked some of the recipes), but Christmas Cake Murder is the first one I’ve read. What a great one to start with; it is a prequel to the series. Hannah Swensen, the central series character, is just setting up her shop, The Cookie Jar, moving out of her mother’s house after the death of her father, and recovering from an unfortunate relationship.
Clea Simon
Clea Simon is the author of four, mostly cozy, mystery series and one standalone thriller. Her latest book, A Spell of Murder, is about witch cats and is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her books have a sparkle and edge to them that’s delightful to discover in a cozy. Mystery Scene: You didn’t start your career as a mystery writer, but as a journalist. What brought about the change? Clea Simon: Honestly? I think I needed the time to build up my courage, as well as my writing chops.
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