The Body in the Dales (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery Book 1)

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Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life” by Helen Fisher – Book Review @RandomTTours #BlogTour #BookReview @simonschusterUK #JoeNuthinsGuideToLife @HFisherAuthor November 20, 2023 I wasn't exactly blown away by this book. The story was OK, but I wasn't really charmed by the characters and the mystery plodded along a bit too much. Thanks to NetGalley, Thomas and Mercer, and J. R. Ellis for giving me all three books in the Yorkshire Murder Mystery series for me to read in return for my honest review. Not a bad book overall and a decent start to a new series. (New to me that is.) I was not all that sold on the ending as there were several facts and details that cropped up right at the last minute. Storytelling was decent and contained enough of the that Yorkshire atmosphere that seems to make these books appealing. Obvious comparisons can be made to the DCI Banks novels, so if you have read any of those then this will be familiar. Caver John Baxter phones Oldroyd up and wants to meet with him. He believes he knows who the killer is and how he got Atkins into the cave. When Oldroyd shows up at his home, he finds Baxter has been murdered.

Revised edition: Previously published as The Body in Jingling Pot , this edition of The Body in the Dales includes editorial revisions. After having read several gritty thrillers over recent times, it was a pleasant respite to read a more traditional police-procedural mystery set in the countryside. The Body in the Dales brings to mind other country-based crime series, including Ann Cleeves's Vera Stanhope series set in Northumberland, Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe series, set in Yorkshire, and television series such as Heartbeat and Wycliffe.As I mentioned earlier, the setting is one of my favourites. The Yorkshire Dales holds an endless fascination for me. The plotting was reminiscent of the traditional mysteries of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, etc. This made a nice change from the more convoluted thriller plots I've been reading recently. Written like a perplexing puzzle, the novel appealed on that level as well - I can never ignore a good puzzle. The Quartet Murders come second in the Yorkshire Murder Mysteries. It is in December, and DCI Jim Oldroyd is excited to be attending a concert where world-famous violinist Hans Muller will be performing. Not even the awful weather would dampen his mood. He would never have anticipated that this violinist would be killed by a bullet the same night. Swinging fast into action, Jim secures the crime scene and also finds the murder weapon. However, the killer is nowhere to be seen, and he had taken the victim’s priceless violin with him. How come no one saw the killer leave or even take the instrument from the violinist’s hands? Jim was there at the concert, and he did not catch the killer even after arriving at the crime scene minutes later. Is it possible that the killer was not working alone?

It starts with a young detective recently moved to the Dales from London. Why? I honestly don’t remember. But there he is, now part of team lead by the senior detective Oldroyd. As with many traditional mystery stories, the novel opens with the discovery of a body. The man was found deep in a cave called "The Jingling Pot". He was not equipped with caving gear, and since there had been a team of cavers in that location just a few days previously, it was a mystery why they had not found him sooner. He had been dead for over a week. The victim is identified as Dave Atkins, a local rogue and financial speculator. He was an unpleasant man who was not liked by many - a fact that leaves the police with no shortage of viable suspects. The pacing is very sedate and there is a large cast of secondary characters who aren't always clearly delineated. I did enjoy this book once I was a bit more invested in the characters, though that honestly took a while. The dialogue was competent and readable from the beginning, and though there wasn't much of a hook at the start, the book really did reward the effort to keep reading. Underneath” by Anne Goodwin – Book Review #NovNov23 #novella @inspiredquill #Underneath#BookReview November 22, 2023The first in the Yorkshire Murder Mystery series is imaginative, puzzling, complex, and frightening! As a bona fide anglophile, books set in England always appeal to me. My mother was a war bride and I still have a lot of family in the 'old country'. I've read all of the James Herriot books and love the Yorkshire area. The setting, and the fact that this is a police procedural, is what attracted me to this book.