So September draws to a close. Luckily, this is always an easy month for me to do the Puzzly round-up as September, being the first month of term for me, is so busy, I tend not to read that many bo…

The Oxford Examinations Syndicate is responsible for running overseas O levels in a variety of countries, most notably in the Middle East, and new recruit Nicholas Quinn is settling nicely into the…

Canada, 1898, and the gold rush is in full flow. People struggling across the frozen wilderness, risking life and limb just to get the chance to seek their fortune. But even those who make the trea…

George Hardy has a seemingly peaceful life in the village of Denbrook, looking after his flock of sheep and reading them murder mystery novels, blissfully ignorant that the sheep talk to each other…

DCI Maxwell Ryan – Ryan to his friends, enemies and anyone who knows him really – has taken a sabbatical following a devastating case where what he saw as his failure caused a devastating personal …

Simon Gabb had everything – or so it seemed: a beautiful house, a big estate, a flourishing business and two sons, both endowed with evident capacity for carrying on the family firm.  On…

Charles Paris, middle-aged, middle-talented actor has hit a new low – a part in a production of The Message Is Murder, namely the body that falls out of the wardrobe in Act One. Not even Charles ca…

Ruth Morgan used to be a police officer. After she was made to step down, she made a new career, travelling across the British Isles in her motorhome with her pampered cat. Heading for her sister’s…

The Isle of Mull sits off the west coast of Scotland, and the ancient Dumfala Castle sits isolated on the North West corner of the island. DI Anna Vaughan is summoned away from her family Christmas…

Peregrine Jay, the owner of the Dolphin Theatre, the site of some murderous shenanigans over twenty years previously, is tempting fate a tad by staging the Scottish Play, namely Macbeth. Directing …

The Threefold Death was an horrific way to die – a sacrifice dating to the times of the Roman occupation of Britain involve death by drowning, stabbing and hanging. But thankfully, this stopped alm…

Time for something new for the blog – hopefully, this will be a regular feature on the blog – where authors get the chance to say a bit about themselves and their latest book by answering six simpl…

“Make sure that Chimbai does not return alive from England. I repeat – Chimbai must die!” Oxford, 1268, and the Tartar tribe from the east has arrived to seek and audience with King Henry III of En…

Horror strikes in the sacred place of embalming when an unexpected corpse is discovered in the embalming salts. A much-hated scribe, Hormin, has been murdered and hidden in the place of Anubis, and…

John Rawlings has finished his indenture as an apprentice and is now qualified as an apothecary. As he celebrates in Vaux Hall Pleasure Gardens, as you might expect from the genre, he trips over th…

The late eleventh century, and the army of pilgrims continues on their crusade to claim Jerusalem for Christianity. But the army is full of internal strife, as exemplified by brothers Fulk and Odo.…

Miyagaki Yotaro, the acclaimed mystery writer, lives in isolation in the remote Labyrinth House, a house designed by the notorious architect Nakamura Seiji – who also designed the Decagon House and…

1947 and the Tsubaki family is mourning the old Viscount Tsubaki who has been found dead. But what caused him to disappear for days before being found dead? Is it possible that he was the man respo…

August went pretty well, reading-wise. Actually, it went pretty well all round, with two lovely breaks where Mrs Puzzle Doctor and I revisited two of our favourite places in Wales and Scotland. The…

Martha Strangeways was an investigative reporter, but that career ended when a tragic house fire killed her young twin children. Struggling through life one day at a time, her sole focus is her tee…

Samuel and Mina Constable request the presence of Dr John Sanders and his friend, Sir Henry Merrivale, as they wish to demonstrate the powers of the psychic Herman Pennik. When Sanders arrives, Pen…

Washington Poe is enjoying something of a quiet life. He has quite the National Crime Agency and set up as a private detective – well, a “Gumshoe For Hire”, according to the sign on the door – with…

Ding dong bell, the witch is in the well. Red witch, blue witch, black or white, one for love, one for fright. One will dance all night long. One will see you dead and gone. Thirty years ago, the D…

Things are finally looking up for the Amlingmeyer brothers. Otto aka Big Red has become a published author, having written up the cases solved by his brother, Gus, aka Old Red, the so-called Holmes…

Ali Dawson works for a very special Cold Case department – cases so cold that they could only be solved if someone discovered a long-lost eye-witness account of the crime… or, failing that, if one …

Redsands is the place to be this Christmas (well, if you’re in 1931), but the weather is playing up a tad, and a number of revellers end up snowed in at the “Noah’s Ark”, a hostelry with plenty of …

Knowing full well that my favorite mystery author got her start after working in the pharmaceutical business (dispensing drugs, don’t ya know!), you would think that another writer with a similar r…

Villainous vicars and perished parsons abound in this collection of short stories from the British Library. Some members of the clergy are sleuths, some are suspects and some are victims in these s…

Logan MacRae is still banished to the outskirts of Aberdeenshire, back in uniform leaving a local division of officers, but life is by no means simpler. When a body is found dumped in the woods, it…

Rooksby-le-Soken in East Anglia is in need of a new vicar, as their current one has been found on a classroom floor, apparently shot through the heart. Except there is no bullet in the body and no …

It was one of Washington Poe’s most complex cases. A murder without a body. Poe was convinced that Jared Keaton, the celebrity chef, had murdered his own daughter. Despite the lack of a body, Eliza…

September in South Devon, and Tradmouth CID are looking forward to the post-summer lull in local crime – but when some builders in nearby Sycamore House find a mummified corpse hidden in a wall, it…

It has been ten years since a group of friends – Olive, Zach, Jazz, Michael and Seth – last saw Abigail Blythe in a Costa Rican beauty spot. Now they have all received an invitation to the launch o…

Knapdale is a remote town on the west coast of Scotland and has been plagued with… well, malicious mischief, although given that it includes (thankfully non-fatal) cat poisoning, that might be unde…

Marian Lane is the best selling author of a series of cosy mysteries, but she is determined to end the series, to the horror of her fans and, given the plans for the final book, her agent as well. …

Washington Poe is enjoying something of a quiet life. He has quite the National Crime Agency and set up as a private detective – well, a “Gumshoe For Hire”, according to the sign on the door – with…

Washington Poe is enjoying something of a quiet life. He has quite the National Crime Agency and set up as a private detective – well, a “Gumshoe For Hire”, according to the sign on the door – with…

1 Delaney Row is a house with a history. Stories abound locally about dark incidents in the house’s past, but when Ellie moves into the house with just a small suitcase and a small handful of cash,…

Acclaimed artist and sometime sleuth Benvenuto Brown is heading to New York City aboard the luxury cruise liner Atlanta, his thoughts focused on his upcoming art exhibition. Not on murder, obviousl…

The Godrick Theatre is one of the most impressive buildings in Widdlington, and it is about to put on The Thistlebridge Conundrum, a mystery play staged by the Widdlington Amateur Dramatic Group. D…

Adam Huth, the chairman of Barugt Pharmaceutical, is dead in this office, a victim of an overdose of drugs. Enter DCI Masters and Inspector Green of Scotland Yard, and it soon becomes apparent that…

It should have been the best day of his life. After years as a writer, Grady Green has finally hit the big time, his latest book being on the New York Times Bestseller list. But the night he receiv…

Hollowpines, a psychiatric hospital with a long history and Joe Sinclair, an inmate, has a story to tell. In his sleep, he saw someone being brutally murdered in a park – a murder that actually too…