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The Wealth of History
Death Takes a Knight follows an American archaeology student visiting Glastonbury who has a friend framed for murder and has to take on the role of amateur sleuth to find the mastermind controlling the pieces in this deadly game of chess. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Here’s what it’s like to tour sacred sites with me: My husband says, “What a beautiful garden,” and I say, “What a great place to dump a body!” In the case of Death Takes a Knight, the inspiration came from visiting Glastonbury Abbey, seeing King Arthur’s gravesite (before the monks hid him), and the Chalice Well Gardens, where the Holy Grail was thrown. The wealth of history, legend, and sacred sites combined to make an irresistible setting.
The Glastonbury Abbey hosts a Medieval Fayre every year, so Arthurian knights do wander through town at times. They inspired the novel’s chess tie-in and the evil mastermind manipulating Maddie and the police.
Maddie is intelligent and capable but also impulsive. How do you balance those qualities without making her seem reckless simply to move the mystery forward?
In the first few books, Maddie is a college sophomore. For anyone who has ever been nineteen, they will remember that decisions that seemed perfectly logical were sometimes crazy. This phenomenon is caused by the brain rewiring, much like the Pixar movie Inside Out. Thoughts like, “I got an unbelievable job offer! I think I’ll stay up all night partying to celebrate,” have happened to the best of us.
For Maddie, she often thinks she’s figured out the best way to do something; however, she is usually wrong. She never plans to wind up in danger, but, of course, she always does!
What is your process for planting clues so readers have a fair opportunity to solve the mystery alongside Maddie?
My process for writing always starts with the crime. Once I have that, I work on the villain. How and why did the crime happen? Answering those questions gives me the clues. In Death Takes a Knight, I created a strict timeline of the mastermind’s movements so he could frame Maddie’s friend, and then interspersed those clues into Maddie’s story.
The clues are always there for the reader, but Maddie usually misinterprets them. As an American in England, she doesn’t read people correctly, and she thinks she understands when she doesn’t.
Are there other areas of British history or archaeology you would especially like Maddie to encounter in future mysteries?
In Book 3, Death Plays with Fire, Maddie works at the Chedworth Roman Villa, which boasts the best-preserved mosaics in England. While still Roman, the villa was constructed about three centuries after the Roman Baths, where she works, so the reader gets to experience a slightly different timeframe.
In Book 6, Death Goes to Church (release date January 2028), which I’m currently writing, Maddie is sent over to help with the Bath Abbey Footprint Project. Conducted by Wessex Archaeology to reinforce the abbey’s failing foundation, this massive undertaking uncovered many Norman, medieval, and Tudor treasures. The project is, in reality, completed, but in the universe of the book, Maddie can still help with uncovering over 2,000 skeletons. And maybe a few ghosts!
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Quirky Characters
Mancini Blue follows a grieving widower as he investigates a murder marked by his late wife’s signature blue paint, uncovering secrets in Savannah’s art world involving a missing painting, forged prescriptions, and suspicious shipments. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This story world grew organically from real-life circumstances and my imagination. As it happens, I live in a rural community that has no bookstores in the entire county. However, several ladies dedicated to the arts got a sweet deal to restore our old jail to become an art center. One of my sisters, a quilter, got in on the ground floor. She arranged for me to do a talk for the art center, and from that moment on, my life was entangled and enriched by the Old Jail Art Center and beautiful art. In time, I became a member of the organization (and they stock my books!) and work one day a month in the art center, surrounded by beautiful art.
I also had a mother-in-law who was a very talented artist. One of the treasures I rescued as we were going through her things was her palette. I framed it and hung it with her other works in watercolor, pastels, and oils. The bold colors in her oils became the color scheme of all my décor.
When I reach the end of a series, I take time off before I start in a new direction. My muse often wanders in its own lane, and I knew I needed something different from my last work. In addition, I wanted to have several points of view, so I landed on third-person POV. I began with these characters: a misunderstood and flawed male protagonist, a female police chief with a chip on her shoulder, and a villain ruled by deceit, jealousy, revenge, and anger.
Then, before I decided anything about the story world, my muse let me know in no uncertain terms that we were writing in the art world about the death of a famous artist. By this time, I had many experiences in the art world with artists, their families, and patrons. Framing this story in the world of art suited me fine because when I ignored my muse in the past, the story never got anywhere. We were both on board for this odyssey.
Did the mystery or the character of Bob come to you first?
I have come to the story world process in many different ways. No matter which order the process happens, it is organic, with one element building on the other. Sometimes it can be as little as an overheard remark that sparks my creativity. To answer the question, Bob came first this time. Sometimes I am lucky, and a character comes to me fully hatched. Bob came to me in steady waves, like ocean breakers rolling into the shore. He was all Southern man despite his veneer of civility. He’d had every opportunity-the best education, money to start his own investment business, and a wife who adored him. His two sons were a credit to the family.
Then Bob’s world fell apart. His wife died. Suicide, the cops said, when there was no sign of foul play in her locked studio. No way, Bob said. He railed against everything, drank too much, and got in bar fights. Nothing could drag him out of his despair. His sons presented him with the option of a treatment center or jail time for his outrageous behavior.
Feeling he had no choice, Bob went with the therapy option, and he liked it so much that he dallied there a while, unready to face the world again. When he left the center, he didn’t want his old life, his family home on a downtown Savannah square, or his company. So he moved an hour south and set up an art gallery there. This is the starting point of Mancini Blue because his life is about to change again.
How did you balance emotional heaviness with the novel’s lighter moments?
One of the longstanding comments about my body of work is that I have quirky characters. That comes naturally to me because I’m a bit quirky myself. I know innately what it is like to be different from others, but I’ve never seen that as a hardship. In my author life, it has been a gold mine because I’m all about the lighter and tender moments. But giving characters darkness and having them stay in it is not something I want to write about. My lane is cozy mysteries, albeit I write on the darker side of cozies.
Showing Bob’s tenderness and care for his niece, her daughter, and Sophie’s ancient dog reveals that he’s not a bad guy. Bob has a caretaker personality, and when his wife died, he lost his tether to reality for a while. Grief takes many forms and varies in emotional depth and circumstance. Bob didn’t know how to process his grief, and being a Southern man, he lost himself in drinking and fighting for a while. All of that happened in the days and weeks following Sophie’s death. The book opens a year later, but his backstory helps everyone know that Bob has deep emotions, that he is more than a stock character. He can manage life now, but his heart is still bruised.
Getting back to the question, I’ve found that having lighter elements offset emotional heaviness makes for a great story. As both authors and readers know, conflict is the engine that drives a story. In addition, I used those moments to redeem Bob in the readers’ eyes. I always knew he was a complex, likeable guy who acted out only because no one would listen to him, let alone believe him when he said his beloved Sophie was murdered. Where the story begins is the moment of change for Bob. To shed his darkness, he must get justice for his late wife. So, he puts on the hat of an amateur sleuth.
If you could ask readers one question after they finish the book, what would it be?
I’d ask readers what their favorite part was. I’m always curious about responses to the world I’ve cobbled together, word by word. For other books I’ve written, readers have fallen in love with one of the characters, or one of the pets, and yet for others, it’s the laid-back vibe of a Southern small town where everyone knows everyone else. As a person raised this way and who moved back to their hometown later in life, I run into people all the time in the grocery store who know my family or me. It is very centering, and even though I am admittedly quirky, I belong here.
Thanks for your interest. I hope you’ll pick up Mancini Blue, and it will be your cup of tea!
Author Links: GoodReads | BookBub | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
He is certain the cops got his wife’s means of death wrong. When he left her in the studio that fateful evening to paint overnight, her door locked behind him. She wouldn’t unlock her door for a stranger. To get justice for Sophie, Bob delves into her murder using his hidden ability to help find solid evidence.
When he unsuccessfully searches his old Savannah haunts for leads, he returns to St. James to discover a bizarre murder occurred near his shop. Despite his alibi, he is questioned by the local cops. He’s stunned when many aspects of this new case are identical to Sophie’s death. Thus, solving his wife’s murder will most likely shed light on the recent case.
Bob’s suspect list includes family members, neighbors, friends, and Sophie’s art associates. He discovers people are rarely what they seem and believes this deadly foe kills to protect secrets. Can he identify his wife’s murderer before the killer strikes again?
Murder (and Other Unpleasantries)
Murder and Other Unpleasantries, by Julie Titterington, is a cozy mystery built around one very inconvenient day in Cornwall. Tamsin Castle is trying to keep her struggling bakery afloat when she meets Clarence Crumpet, a relentlessly friendly American with a dachshund named Fritz and a talent for turning casual conversations into marathons. Tamsin reluctantly accepts his help delivering food to a tearoom on the tidal island of St. Peter the Rock, where a storm traps them with a wealthy, deeply dysfunctional family and the suddenly dead Lady Atherton. The setup gives the book all the ingredients of a classic closed-circle mystery: a limited group of suspects, a poisonous cup of tea, old grudges, money problems, family secrets, and no easy way for anyone to leave.
What makes the book especially fun is the pairing of Tamsin and Crumpet. Tamsin begins the story committed to routine and suspicious of anything that might complicate her life, even making a reluctant promise to spend one day saying yes to new experiences. Crumpet is almost her opposite. He talks constantly, follows every stray thought that catches his attention, and seems genuinely delighted by nearly everyone he meets. Once the investigation starts, though, his rambling personality reveals a surprisingly sharp mind, while Tamsin discovers that she’s good at noticing inconsistencies and keeping him focused. Their friendship develops naturally because each supplies something the other needs. The dachshunds, Bundle and Fritz, add another layer of personality without feeling like accessories pasted onto the mystery.
The novel clearly has some Agatha Christie in its bloodstream. There’s even an early reference to Christie’s Bundle Brent, which signals the author’s affection for Golden Age mysteries. The isolated setting and hostile group of relatives bring And Then There Were None to mind, while the poison, inheritance questions, interviews, and carefully planted physical clues feel closer to a Poirot investigation. Titterington takes that familiar puzzle-box structure and gives it a much more playful voice. The book keeps bouncing between murder clues and wonderfully specific distractions involving scones, British vocabulary, bad tea, dachshund behavior, class manners, and the differences between American and British ideas about food. Tamsin’s position between Oregon and Cornwall also gives the culture-clash jokes more substance than simple tourist humor. She understands both worlds while feeling completely settled in neither.
The structural choice is one of my favorite things about the book. The first half largely lets us experience Crumpet from the outside, where his endless stories can make him look scattered, while the second half moves into his first-person perspective and shows how much is actually happening underneath all that chatter. The eventual solution is carefully tied to details that have been sitting in plain sight, particularly the almond-heavy menu, the tea, the family’s behavior, and Lady Atherton’s peculiar plans for the gathering. That makes the conclusion satisfying as a mystery. More importantly, the case changes both lead characters. Tamsin’s accidental adventure gives her a taste for a life beyond protecting her routines, while Crumpet finds in her the kind of partner who can steady a detective who’s been struggling since losing his wife. By the final pages, their proposed partnership at the Sausage Roll Bakery, with the possibility of future investigations, feels earned. Murder and Other Unpleasantries is a warm, eccentric mystery about murder, pastry, loneliness, friendship, and the strange things that can happen after one badly timed yes.
Pages: 314 | ASIN : B0H7SWNQ4W
Complex Technology
Cyber Case Prima is a thriller that explores the ugly truth behind a hit-and-run that occurs during a self-driving truck demonstration. What draws you to the cyber-technothriller genre?
Cybersecurity was at the center of my professional career. However, when I started writing, I drew on my travels in Italy and wrote an historical fiction series set during the Renaissance. A news article I read recently about a government data network breach sparked the idea of writing a cyber thriller series. Writing the first book, Cyber Case Thorn, was so satisfying that I kept going. Cyber Case Prima is the fourth book in my Cyber Case series.
How much of the cybersecurity and autonomous vehicle technology in the novel is based on real-world systems or research?
All technology-related facets of the story are grounded in present-day developments and scenarios. I want my books to be authentic because that’s what readers expect. I often jest that I spend as much time doing research as writing.
The novel feels plausible in a way that makes the danger more unsettling. Did you consciously aim for a “this could happen tomorrow” atmosphere?
Given the daily occurrence of cyber incidents, I have no trouble finding timely subjects for my books. The challenge in writing cyber thriller books is in making complex technology understandable and engaging for readers. I tend to put too many intricate details into my initial drafts, and then cut them back during revisions to avoid detracting from the story.
Can fans look forward to another installment of The Cyber Case series?
Absolutely. The next book in the Cyber Case series centers on one technology that spans applications ranging from the entertainment business to the medical field. I’m learning a great deal by doing the research for this book.
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Engineers are baffled. Their simulations covered this scenario a thousand times. Investors and government regulators are stunned. Nothing in the data makes sense.
Cyber Security Agency investigator Seph Carano is called upon to unravel the failure of a critical sensor—one that didn’t just malfunction, but appears to have been tampered with. Who altered its control software? A rival corporation? A disgruntled insider? A zealot with an agenda? Every clue points to sabotage—surgical, deliberate, and still in motion.
One thing is certain: the crash was only the opening move. Now Seph is racing to expose the saboteur and prevent greater havoc.
Cyber Case Prima is the fourth installment in the high‑stakes Cyber Case series—where cutting‑edge technology, human ambition, and digital deception collide with deadly potentially consequences.
Cyber Case Prima
Cyber Case Prima, by Ken Tentarelli, is a cyber-technothriller about a self-driving truck demonstration that turns disastrous when Prima Ace strikes a cyclist and keeps going. What first looks like a technical failure becomes something darker as Seph Carano and her CSA team dig into corrupted software, corporate pressure, autonomous vehicle testing, and a hacker whose motives are tangled up with grief and revenge. The story moves between government cyber work, startup ambition, and the uneasy question of what happens when smart machines fail in very human ways.
As someone who enjoys technothrillers, I liked how grounded this one felt. Tentarelli doesn’t treat the technology like magic. The lidar, software versions, testing procedures, and agency politics all feel connected to real systems, but the book stays readable. I never felt buried under jargon. The opening accident is a strong hook because it is visual and unsettling. A truck that simply does not “see” a cyclist is scary in a clean, modern way, and the book understands that the fear is not just the crash itself. It’s the silence after. The machine keeps moving.
I also appreciated the author’s choice to make the villain’s motive personal rather than cartoonish. The revenge thread gives the cyber plot an emotional pulse, even when the investigation is moving through code comparisons and agency approvals. Seph is a steady lead, curious and humane, and I liked that she doesn’t solve problems by acting like the smartest person in every room. She listens. She worries about mission drift. She notices people. Some scenes are more procedural than tense, and readers looking for constant explosions may find the pace measured. For me, that worked because the book is interested in process, not just payoff.
Cyber Case Prima is a thoughtful and accessible technothriller with a strong cybersecurity angle and a timely concern about autonomous vehicles. I would recommend it to readers who like Michael Crichton-style “what if this technology goes wrong?” stories, but with more investigative teamwork and less spectacle. It will especially appeal to readers who enjoy cyber thrillers that feel plausible, careful, and human at the center.
Pages: 266 | ASIN : B0D1BYLCFM
Death in the Manor
Death in the Manor, by Michael H. Balfour, is a layered mystery that starts with Roland Astor’s suspicious death and steadily widens into a story about money, legacy, family loyalty, and civic rot. Dante Villehart enters Astor Manor expecting a rich family’s private disaster, but the case quickly becomes bigger than one dead man in a study. The novel works best as an investigation of power: how it’s inherited, protected, hidden, and eventually exposed.
Dante is the center of the book, and he’s easy to spend time with because he’s observant, worn down, funny, and just self-aware enough to know when the case is getting under his skin. His exchanges with Gemma, Marissa, Ingrid, Beatrice, Marcus, Margaret, and Dr. Blackwood give the story a lived-in feel. The book gives him a lot to carry, but it also lets him be human in small ways, especially when someone reminds him, “You can’t help everyone, you know.”
The manor itself feels like more than a setting. It’s a pressure chamber full of locked rooms, old grudges, coded files, hidden cameras, and family history that refuses to stay buried. One of the best early lines comes when Beatrice says, “The Astor family, Mr. Villehart, has never lacked for enemies. Most of them dine at our table.” That line captures the book’s whole mood: polished manners on the surface, bruises and leverage underneath.
As the plot moves from a possible suicide to Project Phoenix, offshore accounts, boardroom panic, blackmail, and corruption reaching into City Hall, the story becomes part manor mystery and part corporate crime thriller. The pacing is strongest when Dante is following paper trails, reading people’s silences, or trying to decide who’s scared and who’s performing. There’s a good balance between clue-hunting and character work, so the revelations feel tied to people’s choices rather than just case mechanics.
Death in the Manor is a moody, talky, character-driven mystery with a broadening sense of danger and a detective who’s as interested in motives as he is in evidence. It’s about a death, but it’s just as much about the machinery around that death: the family myth, the financial scheme, the public image, and the people left to clean up after powerful men. The book closes with enough resolution to satisfy the case while still leaving Dante’s world open, which fits the series well.
Pages: 373 | ASIN : B0G3JWPL1N
Diagnosis or Death (Janna Rose Mysteries)
Diagnosis or Death, the second book in the Janna Rose Mysteries series by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, is a contemporary mystery novel built around therapist Janna Rose, who is pulled into a tangled case involving a suspicious online video, benefit fraud, deepfake technology, psychotherapy, and the death of a fellow practitioner. What begins as a professional concern becomes a wider investigation into who is manipulating vulnerable people, who is being framed, and how easily trust can be weaponized in systems meant to help.
What I liked most was how relatable Janna feels on the page. She is sharp, funny, nosy, principled, and occasionally messy in ways that made me believe in her. The narration has a chatty, authentic quality, almost as if she is telling me the story over tea while half-watching her bank balance and half-thinking about the next clue. That looseness works well for the genre because the mystery does not unfold in some polished detective bubble. It grows out of everyday pressures: rent, family, work, ethics, professional pride, old friendships, and the awkward little compromises people make to get through the week.
The authors make some bold choices, especially in blending a murder mystery with issues like disability benefits, EMDR therapy, AI fakery, local politics, and social care. The book carries a lot. But I appreciated that it tries to make the mystery matter beyond the puzzle itself. The best parts are when the plot and the ideas rub against each other, making me wonder not only who did what, but who gets believed, who gets dismissed, and who profits when vulnerable people are pushed around. The therapy material could have felt dry, but it usually lands because it is filtered through Janna’s practical, skeptical, compassionate voice.
I would recommend Diagnosis or Death to readers who enjoy character-led mystery fiction with a topical edge. It’s especially suited to fans of amateur sleuth stories, British social mysteries, and crime novels where the investigation is tangled up with institutions, ethics, and ordinary life. Readers who like their mysteries thoughtful, witty, and grounded in real-world anxieties should find plenty to enjoy.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0GS462DZT
Angus Sliders – A Max Calder Spy-Fi Mystery
Angus Sliders drops you straight into a foggy world of spies, memory loss, and shadowy doubles, and it wastes no time setting the stakes. Max Calder is living quietly in Lisbon when a strange broadcast pulls him back toward old secrets, and a long-buried threat named the Mirror starts to stir again. What follows is a chain of chases, coded messages, old flames returning at the wrong time, and a slow unravelling of Max’s own mind. The story moves from Lisbon’s rainy streets to steamers cutting through gray water to intelligence offices and old wartime wounds. It feels like a personal fight as much as a global one, and that tension powers the whole book.
I caught myself getting wrapped up in the atmosphere. The writing has this rich, moody quality that made me see the wet stones and dim cafes and flickering lamps. I had a real fondness for how the book blends real historical detail with fiction. It adds weight without dragging things down, and it gave the world a texture that felt lived in. I did feel a little overwhelmed during a couple of the denser spycraft moments. The pace surged forward anyway, so the confusion never lasted long. Even so, I kept reading because Max’s voice added so much color. His wit made even the bleak moments feel sharp instead of heavy.
The emotional core of the book worked for me more than I expected. Max’s slipping memory is more than a plot device. It hits like a crack that spreads through everything he touches. Every time he forgot something important, I felt a small sting as if the loss were personal. His scenes with Alicia had that same effect. Their dynamic has this messy, bittersweet edge that kept tugging at me. They know too much about each other and not enough at the same time, and their shared history hangs over every conversation. I liked that the book never tried to make their relationship tidy. It leaned into the chaos of it, and that honesty made it hit harder.
This book builds a world that kept pulling me forward, and I enjoyed being lost in it. If you like spy stories that mix real history with strange tech, or if you enjoy mysteries that twist around memory and identity, this one will be a great fit. Readers who want both grit and style in the same breath will probably have as much fun with it as I did.
Pages: 337 | ASIN : B0G26J24T2
