I’m delighted to share my review for Murder in the Bookshop by Anita Davison #bookreview #historicalmystery #newrelease

Here’s the blurb:

Someone’s been read their last rites…

1915, London: Working in the dusty bookshop that her Aunt Violet mysteriously inherited, Hannah Merrill is accustomed to finding twists in every tale. But discovering her beloved best friend Lily-Anne – with a paperknife through her heart – in the middle of the bookshop, is not a plotline she saw coming.

The case is anything but textbook. With the discovery of a coded German message, and Hannah’s instinct that Lily-Anne’s husband is keeping secrets, she determines to get to the bottom of it.

She can’t do it alone though. To crack this case, Hannah will need to enlist the help of her outrageous, opinionated, only-occasionally-objectionable Aunt Violet.

They think they’re making progress until one of their chief suspects is found dead. And Hannah realises that she is herself now in the murderer’s sights. Will the final chapter be the ending of a killer… or just a killer ending?

A totally addictive, WW1-set cozy mystery, perfect for fans of Verity Bright, T.E. Kinsey, and Agatha Christie.

My Review

Murder in the Bookshop is a cosy historical fiction story set in 1915 in London, England.

Well grounded in the events of the day – the Great War hasn’t been as easy to win as all believed – there are fears of bombs being dropped by the Germans via Zeppelin – the realities of the war are starting to make themselves known with food shortages – this is a really well-envisioned study of the period. Added to which, we have a Murder in the Bookshop.

Our main character is Hannah, who having lost her fiance during the war, now lives with her aunt and helps her run a bookshop. She’s a fiesty character, very much a woman of her day. Aunt Violet is a suffragette and that’s just the beginning of the scandals that surround her. Hannah’s mother wants her to marry, but Hannah isn’t at all interested in doing what her mother wants, and indeed, her mother never actually makes an appearance in the story – which is probably for the best.

Instead, Hannah finds herself determined to discover the culprit behind the murder, and this forces her to come to terms with some truths she’s never known about her friends.

What follows is a really well-constructed story of murder, conspiracy, suspicion and indeed, some peril for our main characters as well.

I read this book in about 2 sittings. I thoroughly enjoyed the setting, the mystery and the resolution, which I didn’t guess at all.

A fabulous war-time mystery sure to thrill fans of the historical mystery genre.

Meet the author

Anita Davison is the author of the successful Flora Maguire historical mystery series. Previously published by Aria, she is writing a new cosy mystery series for Boldwood, the first title of which, Murder in the Bookshop, will be published in August 2023.

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