Murder Most Bookish - Anthea Fraser ***(*)
By Brian Clegg
As an author with a penchant for countryside-based crime it was difficult to resist such a cosy crime novel with books at its heart. Specifically the central character, Rona Parish is a successful biographer, whose book on Arthur Conan Doyle was well-received – she is asked to write a biography of the recently deceased author Theo Harvey by his widow.
Harvey had been a writer of successful thrillers who spent two years with writer’s block before returning to write two entirely different works of miserable but critically acclaimed literary fiction. This makes him an appealing subject, though as Rona’s husband points out it could (and would) turn out to be a hornet’s nest.
There’s a lot going on here for what is often a fairly simplistic genre. Rona receives increasingly strong threats to discourage her from continuing (including her dog being poisoned). There’s a murder. There’s a side story of Rona’s sister’s love life with a stalker-ex and an unlikely new boyfriend. If she has any hope of writing the book, Rona feels she has to dig into Harvey’s writer’s block and total change of writing style, despite everything telling her she should stop (including her husband, who oddly doesn’t live in the same house most of the time).
You can’t fault it then for having enough going on. But I never felt it was much of a page turner (and I’m unlikely to continue with the flagged up Chiltern Hills Mysteries of which this is book 1) – a pleasant enough read, though.
You can buy Murder Most Bookish from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com (may only be available on Kindle)
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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.
Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/10/murder-most-bookish-anthea-fraser.html
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