Miss Silver Comes to Stay by Patricia Wentworth, for the #1949Club

In the 15th Miss Silver book, she just happens to be staying with a school friend when a murder takes place. Does she have precognition? I couldn’t help wondering what her fave, Alfred, Lord Tennyson would say about this. In Locksley Hall, his narrator says:

“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be . . .”

A Wreath for Rivera by Ngaio Marsh, for the 1949 Club

This is the 15th entry in Marsh’s mystery series featuring detective Roderick Alleyn and his sidekick, Mr. Fox. It starts when Carlisle Wayne, who has been working on Famine Relief in Greece and just returned to England, receives an invitation from her aunt by marriage, Lady Pastern, for a weekend at Eaton Place (wasn’t that where Upstairs Downstairs took place?) in London to be a good influence on her step-cousin, Félicité.

Another cousin, old friend Ned Manx, writes to Carlisle, offering her a ride to London and updates her on the Pasterns’ current estrangement and Félicité’s interest in a very unsuitable musician, Carlos Rivera, from a boogie-woogie band called Breezy Bellairs’ Boys.

Stateless by Elizabeth Wein - 20BOS26–13

Few books could be as intense or memorable as Wein’s award-winning Code Name Verity (2012), set in Gestapo headquarters in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. If I created my Top 10 Books of the 21st Century (there’s an idea), it would certainly be included. Stateless also features a feisty young heroine who is an aviator but it is set six years earlier in 1937.

The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth: A Miss Silver Mystery

If one has to be an orphan, it is helpful to be an heiress, however modest, and be reasonably attractive. Laura Fane has “white skin, dark hair, and the grey-green eyes which were her real beauty.” She lost her parents when she was just five, after her father’s decision to jilt his cousin Agnes when he met and fell for Laura’s mother caused a family rift. Now 21, she has come to London to meet with a lawyer about her inheritance. She currently receives £400/year, mostly from renting her father’s home, the Priory, to her Cousin Agnes, and she works as a secretary at a convalescent home for soldiers.

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown (Guest Review)

“Dual timeline” novels are quite popular these days, but The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton adds another twist. Jennifer Brown alternates a past-tense narrative set in the 16th century with a present-tense story in which, yes, a historian is searching for a lost book – but also is involved in a classic thriller, with eight people in an old, isolated manor house amid increasing menace. Both parts are well done and make for a compelling read.

A Deceptive Devotion by Iona Wishaw - 20BOS26-12

It’s been six years since I visited Lane Winslow and her neighbors in King’s Cove, British Columbia, where she settled after WWII, hoping to find a peaceful place to rebuild her life. She has been partially successful: she is living in a shining white, old-fashioned house nestled on a dappled, sunlit green lawn, which she is extremely fond of; moreover, she has made numerous new friends and, in the previous book, became engaged to Frederick Darling, a former bomber pilot, who served in the RAF, now a police inspector in his native Canada.

The Rúin by Dervla McTiernan

The Rúin is a dark, suspenseful debut set in Galway, first in a series. It follows Detective Cormac Reilly as he relocates from Dublin with his girlfriend, and (somewhat mysteriously) is treated with hostility by his new police department, which assigns him to cold cases (some of which are not just cold but wet - he thinks his colleagues are deliberately spilling coffee on the case files to show their contempt of him), despite an impressive 20-year career. When Jack Blake commits suicide by jumping in the River Corrib, his fiancee and sister are devastated and argue there are circumstances regarding his death that make murder more likely.

A Murder in Marylebone by Emily Sullivan #20BOS26-4

Alas, A Murder in Marylebone barely mentions Marylebone and is too obviously written by an American, although it began promisingly. Minerva Harper, a widow with two children, has returned to London after some 15 years in Greece. Her husband, Oliver, was a diplomat but left the British Embassy and retired with his family to Corfu. Minnie remained there after his death, against the wishes of her family, and recently undertook some typing for a mystery writer, Stephen Dorian. 

The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman #20BOS26-2

Moira Redmond recently wrote about fortune tellers in her Clothes in Books blog, and that got me thinking about a two-book series by Dorothy Gilman that begins with The Clairvoyant Countess. I couldn’t remember if I had read it so I requested it from the library and included it in my 20 Books of Summer.

The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth, for the 1961 Club

Most people think of Patricia Wentworth as a Golden Age of Detective Fiction writer whose books fall into the cozy category; however, The Girl in the Cellar opens with a very frightening scene.

The heroine has passed out and wakes up in darkness:

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie26

In this mystery set on a fictional island in the Caribbean, Miss Marple’s quiet vacation is (surprise!) interrupted by murder. Her nephew Raymond had thoughtfully paid for her to travel to the West Indies to recuperate after a bad bout of pneumonia, and now Miss Marple is doing what she does best: listening. 

Hello, Summer by Mary Kay Andrews, who reveals her Betsy-Tacy fandom

Given the challenges newspapers have experienced, investigative reporter Conley Hawkins is thrilled to have been offered a prestigious job in Washington, DC. Then, during her actual goodbye party, in the sort of nightmare situation that would normally only happen to yours truly, she learns her new employer has gone bankrupt – so no job in DC and her job in Atlanta has already been filled. 

Other People's Houses by Clare Mackintosh – Reading Wales 2026

In the third mystery featuring Detective Constable Ffion Morgan in Wales and Detective Sergeant Leo Brady just across the border in England, Ffion is investigating a drowned real estate agent while Leo has been summoned to a ritzy neighborhood in Cheshire, the Hill, regarding a string of burglaries. As I learned when visiting Cornwall several years ago (and it is also true on Cape Cod), housing in areas where tourism is a major industry has become too expensive for traditional residents.

Danger Point aka In the Balance by Patricia Wentworth

If you are experiencing a crisis, running into Miss Silver on the London train is most fortuitous. In her kind, decisive way, she will try to find out what is wrong:

“I came away in a hurry.”

“Why?” said Miss Silver.

“They said he was trying to kill me,” said Lisle Jerningham.

The Snow Lies Deep by Paula Munier

In this seventh book about Mercy Carr, formerly Army Military Police, she is now settled in chilly Vermont, happily married, and has a nine-month-old baby, Felicity. Although Felicity is too young to recognize the season, Mercy and her mother are obsessed with making the baby’s first Christmas as memorable as possible. This begins with a trip to town for a photo op with Santa, and includes massive holiday decorations, indoors and out, and parties scheduled at Mercy and Troy’s home, Grackle Tree Farm.

Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron

Sarah Trafford is bored and frustrated after losing her publishing job, and is especially annoyed when her husband, Mark, forces her to host a dinner party for a pretentious financier, Gerard, and his trophy wife. Gerard enjoys goading Sarah and he is even ruder to the other guests; an interruption by an explosion in the neighborhood is welcome and they all go outside to see what happened.

Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent - my first five-star review of 2026

What could be better than a mystery set in Oxford that features four amateur sleuths who love words?  In this crime fiction debut, Martha Thornhill had been working in Germany for ten years until she is encouraged to apply for a job back home as the senior editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary. She likes her job but there’s a little tension with her three coworkers: Martha knows elegant Alex Monroe could have led the department as effectively as she while Simon Turner is still disappointed he wasn’t chosen.

Bloody Instructions by Sara Woods

Written later than most of the Golden Age of Mysteries so many of us enjoy, Bloody Instructions is the appealing launch of 48 books about an attractive young barrister, Antony Maitland, who practices with his distinguished (and sometimes curmudgeonly) uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding. Sent on an errand to the firm of solicitors with whom they frequently work, Antony expects nothing more than a cup of tea but is still there when mild-mannered solicitor James Winter is discovered with a knife in his back!

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

Muriel Blossom is both excited and nervous about her forthcoming vacation and cruise in France, and is charmed when a handsome man at the Baltimore airport befriends her as they are upgraded to first class. Since her husband died, she hasn’t looked at another man, but Allan is outgoing and attentive. When it seems as if she won’t make her connection at Heathrow, he insists she accompany him to London to spend the day, helps her get a hotel room, and book the Eurostar for the next day.

The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton, for Dean Street December

This is my third entry for Dean Street December, and it seems appropriate for it to be a mystery by an author I’d never heard of until Dean Street Press reprinted 15 of her books. Starting in 1924, Moray Dalton published 29 mysteries, most of which feature two detectives, Scotland Yard inspector Hugh Collier and private inquiry agent Hermann Glide. I thought I had chosen the first in the series but as it is set at a Christmas house party in the country, it was still very suitable.