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Books, Bunnies, and a Body: A Bonne Année Mystery
In N.E. Carlisle’s Books, Bunnies, and a Body, books get rescued from closing shops, literary luncheons require serious menu planning, and even the dog has opinions about the neighbors. The setting is Hazelton, a small town on the Oregon coast, where Bonne Année Steele, known as Annee, runs The Literary Table out of her grandparents’ house. Her business brings books and food together, with gatherings inspired by writers such as Beatrix Potter and E. M. Forster. When the town’s spring festivities become the scene of a murder, Annee’s connections to the people around her draw her into the investigation. It’s an appealing setup, especially because Carlisle makes the shop feel like a business someone actually has to run, complete with overflowing inventory, customer expectations, and the work behind a beautiful table.
Annee’s voice gives the book much of its personality. She’s observant, occasionally prickly, and deeply attached to the things her family left behind. Her tendency to retreat into her own thoughts can complicate her relationships, and that makes her an interesting person to follow through a mystery. I especially liked how Carlisle connects hospitality with care. Annee’s celiac disease and nut allergy shape everyday decisions about eating and entertaining, while the people closest to her show their affection through practical gestures. Her friendship with Alejandro has an easy familiarity, and Mackenzie’s wedding preparations bring affectionate humor alongside believable tension. Oscar, Annee’s Bernedoodle, earns his place through his habits and constant presence. The quieter scenes with Mr. Morrison also give the story room to acknowledge grief with tenderness and a little humor.
Carlisle spends considerable time on the textures of Hazelton: damp gardens, mismatched china, old bindings, warm kitchens, and meals described down to their herbs and serving dishes. Those details support one of the book’s most interesting questions: how do you measure the value of something that holds another person’s memories? They also make the pacing leisurely. I enjoyed the descriptions most when they revealed a relationship or gave an ordinary object new significance. Some longer passages about decorating and preparing food slowed the investigation, and Annee occasionally revisits feelings the reader already understands. The book also carries several ongoing concerns, including family history, romance, and the town’s changing future. That breadth gives Hazelton a life beyond the central case, though it asks for patience as the different threads take turns.
The book reminded me of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, particularly in its affection for older characters and its interest in the emotional lives surrounding an investigation. Both books find humor in familiar routines and allow friendship and loss to carry real weight. Carlisle’s particular pleasure is the combination of bookselling, cooking, and a narrator whose home is also the place where her community gathers. Readers who enjoy getting to know a recurring cast will find plenty to appreciate, although references to earlier events make the established history between these people noticeable. The recipes at the back are a fitting addition, extending the attention to food that runs through the story. I’d recommend this to cozy mystery readers who enjoy a generous helping of domestic detail and characters whose relationships deserve as much attention as the clues.
Pages: 365 | ASIN : B0HH7W4M5D
A Good Angle for a Story
Mystery at the Hidden River follows a retired engineer as his professional expertise draws him into investigating the suspicious death of a fellow engineer on the Northern California coast. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The suspicious death of a colleague is the setup for the revealing of a dangerous landslide on the Hidden River. I learned of a similar landslide in my disaster-related work many years ago, and thought that such a threat would be a good angle for a story. Of course, Hidden River was completed months before the terrible Nepal flash flood, which showed in reality the sort of threat posed by a landslide that could temporarily block a river.
What kind of emotional experience did you want readers to have between moments of suspense?
To be carried along in Jace Carter’s life as he deals with things on a daily basis. Mr. Carter is in many ways an ‘everyman,’ in that he does ordinary things as anyone does, but is drawn into these extraordinary situations. By walking with Jace as he seeks to solve the ordinary problems of living, the reader shares his emotions and confusion as he faces the puzzling and sometimes frightening aspects of his investigation.
How does the landscape become part of the mystery?
The fictional Hidden River is an interesting draw into the story. In the storyline, early European explorers noticed that fresh water could be found in a certain place out at sea, but there was no visible source at the shore. There is a real parallel in history with the Amazon River that way, though with the Amazon the fresh water was available many miles from visible land. In this case, the fictional Hidden River is ‘cloaked’ by the many cliffs around and behind the river mouth that all look the same from the ocean.
The landslide threat is also looming in the story and is not discovered by Jace Carter and the law until the dead engineer’s office is searched. The drug dealer’s den is also discovered at the same time, and the difficult terrain in the Coastal Mountains makes such a secretive location believable.
If you could ask Jace Carter one question, what would it be?
When will your life become normal?
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Mystery at the Hidden River
J. Clifford Barnes’s Mystery at the Hidden River is a warm, engaging mystery built around an unusual kind of amateur detective. Jace Carter is a retired civil engineer in his mid-60s who’d be perfectly content tending his garden, drinking good coffee, and enjoying a quiet life on the Northern California coast. Instead, the suspicious death of fellow engineer Dustin Macky draws him into an investigation where his professional knowledge becomes every bit as valuable as traditional police work. Hydrology calculations, engineering files, building permits, geological hazards, and development plans all become clues, giving the story a personality that feels grounded in the way real people actually solve complicated problems.
Jace is the heart of the book. He’s practical, observant, good-humored, and refreshingly comfortable with who he is. His narration makes room for sandwiches, fishing trips, gardening, coffee, storm preparation, and the everyday inconveniences of retirement alongside murder and criminal conspiracy. Those details give Inglesee, Seacrest, and the Hidden River area the comfortable familiarity of places the reader can picture living in. They also make the danger more effective when it arrives. An enormous atmospheric river, a threatened harbor, an escaped suspect, a firebombing, and a corporate scheme all become more immediate because they’re happening to someone who’d really rather be repairing a planter box or reading in his easy chair.
The mystery itself grows naturally from Dustin Macky’s engineering work. What begins with a dead man and a disordered stack of hydrologic calculations expands into the threat posed by the Buck Starr Landslide, an illegal growing operation, a powerful development company with designs on Hidden River Harbor, and a suspicious harbor board member with connections that run deeper than anyone first realizes. Barnes keeps these threads moving through Jace’s particular way of thinking. He notices inconsistencies, understands what technical information means in practical terms, and often finds solutions because he knows how government agencies, contractors, engineers, and local institutions actually function. That gives the investigation an appealing nuts-and-bolts quality while still leaving room for danger, misdirection, and a satisfying escalation toward the solution.
What makes Mystery at the Hidden River especially enjoyable is the combination of small-town mystery, procedural problem-solving, coastal atmosphere, and an older protagonist who discovers that retirement hasn’t made him any less useful. Jace doesn’t become a different person in order to solve the case. His experience, patience, curiosity, and accumulated knowledge are exactly what make him effective. By the end, the investigation has pushed him into serious danger, exposed a much larger criminal operation, and even forced him to rethink how he can keep helping law enforcement without making himself an easy target. His resulting notion of becoming an “undercover volunteer sleuth” feels like both a satisfying conclusion and an inviting promise of more adventures ahead. Mystery at the Hidden River turns the practical wisdom of a retired engineer into the secret weapon of a smart, personable mystery you’ll want to follow wherever Jace Carter goes next.
Pages: 88 | ASIN : B0HBT7SK9Y
Dark, Cold Eyes
Kay A. Oliver’s Dark, Cold Eyes pulls you straight into a world of sharp tension, mystery, and the unnerving weight of human motives. The story follows Keri and Jade Shaw, private investigators drawn into a string of murders in the otherwise quiet, upper-crust neighborhood of Grosse Pointe. When a couple is found brutally murdered, what begins as a simple research assignment turns into a web of deceit, hidden identities, and moral gray zones. Each chapter builds on suspense while peeling back layers of both the crimes and the people entangled in them. It’s a dark, atmospheric dive into what happens when ordinary lives hide extraordinary secrets.
The writing is vivid and cinematic, almost like watching a detective drama late at night when the rest of the house is quiet. Oliver’s style has a rhythm, it’s crisp when it needs to be and haunting when it lingers. I loved how she gave space for silence, for tension to breathe, for you to feel the pulse of fear. The dialogue between Keri and Jade feels real and warm, the kind of married banter that makes you believe in their partnership even as danger closes in. But sometimes the pace moves so fast that I wished for more time to sit with the emotions of the moment. The action carries you forward, but the emotional aftermath sometimes fades quickly.
What really struck me was how the story blurs the line between justice and obsession. Keri’s drive to solve the case starts to feel personal, like she’s chasing ghosts as much as answers. The way Oliver uses setting, quiet kitchens, dark streets, cluttered evidence boards, to mirror the unraveling of her characters hit me hard. You can sense the exhaustion, the moral weight pressing on everyone. Yet despite all the darkness, there’s a heartbeat of hope running through the pages. It’s not loud, but it’s there, stubborn and relatable.
If you like thrillers that mix grit with empathy, this book’s for you. It’s perfect for readers who love crime stories with layered characters and clever plotting rather than simple chases or explosions. Dark, Cold Eyes is tense, intelligent, and full of heart. A story that keeps your mind racing long after you close the book.
Pages: 395 | ASIN : B0FGWH27M7
Finding Humor in the Darkest of Times
The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook follows the protégée of a former actress who discovers the actress’s hidden notebooks, after her questionable death, revealing a dark past and possible motive for her murder. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
All the characters, apart from The Doyenne, were featured in a long-listed short story about a writers’ group in a rural part of the UK. I loved these characters so much, I didn’t want to let them go, so I decided to turn the short story into a novel.
The short story was written as a farce, and I carried on writing the novel in that vein. However, once The Doyenne’s character was introduced and her story became more complex, it was inappropriate to have slapstick scenes going on around her. It is still humorous in parts, but now has more bittersweet undertones.
I enjoyed your characters, especially DCI Middleton. What was your favorite character to write for and why?
DCI Humphrey Middleton was definitely up there. In the first few drafts, he only appeared at the beginning, but a few beta readers suggested that I bring him back later in the story, which I did.
I think those whose jobs involve coming face-to-face with death regularly, doctors, nurses and police officers, are exceptional people. So, it was interesting to get inside Humphrey’s head, and I do believe that being able to find humour, even in the darkest of times, keeps us all going. Edna Fowler and Arthur Boniface were also fun characters to write.
How did the mystery develop for this story? Did you plan it before writing, or did it develop organically?
I will always be a pantser at heart, but I did try to plot The Doyenne. I knew if I was going to turn my quirky little writers’ group short story into a novel, something had to happen that would profoundly affect them all. So I decided to ‘bump off’ the character who was known and loved by all! I am a sucker for telling stories in flashback, but I will try to curb that enthusiasm with my next novel.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out and what can your fans expect in the next story?
It was written as a stand-alone novel, like my debut, Just Say It, but, as I am already missing the characters from The Doyenne, it makes me think that I might venture down the road of writing novellas about some of them, but, at the moment, it is a big maybe.
I am nearing the completion of the first draft of my third novel, which I hope will be released in 2026. I am totally out of my comfort zone because it is more of a psychological drama, but I am too invested in the character to bail out on them now.
So, it is fair to say that I am still trying to find my niche, genre-wise. However, without a doubt, I am most comfortable writing bittersweet storylines, because I believe that, however dark a story gets, a smattering of humour is essential.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Instagram | Website
Villagers are appalled to learn that the charismatic Jocelyn died from Hemlock poisoning. Police claim she shot and ate a quail that had ingested hemlock. A theory disputed by all who knew her well. The animal-loving Jocelyn would never kill anything, but due to the lack of forensic evidence, police rule death by misadventure.
Jocelyn’s young protégée, Lucy Fothergill, determined to discover the truth about what happened to her mentor, discovers a hidden stash of Jocelyn’s notebooks, revealing jaw-dropping secrets from Jocelyn’s past. The impression Jocelyn gave the world that she lived a near-perfect life was an Academy Award-winning performance.
Believing the events from Jocelyn’s past may have led to her death forty-eight years later, Lucy begins to piece together the clues that lead to the truth.
The sleepy village of Didsbrook is about to wake up!
The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook
Tessa Barrie’s The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook is a charming and clever blend of cozy mystery and emotional introspection, set in a picture-perfect English village brimming with secrets. The novel kicks off with the sudden and suspicious death of Jocelyn Robertshaw, a glamorous former actress turned best-selling author. Her passing sends ripples through the quaint village of Didsbrook, stirring up a whirlwind of gossip, speculation, and long-buried truths. Through a rotating cast of relatable characters, from wide-eyed young Lucy to weary but sharp-witted DCI Middleton, the story unravels a layered mystery that bridges generations, identities, and emotional reckonings.
What I loved most about this book was its vivid sense of place and community. Barrie paints Didsbrook with loving, whimsical strokes, half theatrical set, half living village. The writing has a warm, inviting tone, even when diving into darker themes like grief, betrayal, and mortality. There’s something tender and sharp happening at the same time in these pages. The narrative is breezy without being shallow, and full of theatrical flair, particularly in the witty banter and sly nods to classic detective fiction. And though it dips into mystery tropes, it does so with affection and originality. The characters feel lived-in. DCI Middleton, in particular, made me smile with his mix of grump and gallows humor.
There’s a lot of backstory and a sprawling ensemble that took some time to keep straight. But I didn’t mind getting lost in the sidetracks. The emotional undercurrent is strong and steady. The story isn’t just about whodunit. It’s about why we hide parts of ourselves, and what happens when truths finally come out. That gave the book its real punch. Jocelyn’s life, even in death, becomes a mirror for the other characters to confront their own stories.
If you’re someone who enjoys character-driven mysteries with a side of small-town eccentricity and a splash of theatrical charm, this is your kind of read. Fans of Richard Osman, Agatha Christie, or even Joanna Cannon would feel right at home. It’s funny, thoughtful, and heartfelt. And despite the crime at its center, it somehow manages to feel like a warm hug. I’d happily recommend it to anyone who likes their mysteries with brains, heart, and a little sparkle.
Pages: 307 | ASIN : B0F9P9DM57
