Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: A Murder of Crows by Margaret Duffy

Looking for something new and different to read? By all means, consider Margaret Duffy’s books. Margaret Duffy has led an interesting life. She worked for the British Inland Revenue and for the British Ministry of Defense. She is also a garden designer. Somehow she has found the time to publish 29 novels, with the 30^th set for release in March 2021.

A Murder of Crows (St. Martins Press, 1988; Lume Books, 2015) introduces Ingrid Langley and Patrick Gillard in a difficult to categorize story. Romance, mystery, and espionage coalesce in a fast-moving tale with unusual, quite human characters.

Ingrid Langley is a successful novelist, happily married to her second husband Peter Clyde, a policeman. Her acrimonious marriage to her teenage sweetheart Patrick Gillard ended with her throwing him out of her house years before. But Peter is murdered in questionable circumstances and Patrick was present when he died. Patrick, who is recovering from injuries received in the Falklands War, has been recruited by one of the secret service agencies. He needs a female partner to serve as his cover on an assignment and asks Ingrid, knowing she has no romantic interest in him and will focus on the job. Ingrid’s immediate reaction is to decline but she realizes Patrick can help her find out what actually happened to Peter.

Patrick is trying to find a mole in the British government, Ingrid is trying to finish her next novel, and they both gradually realize they have unfinished business with each other. Patrick’s search throws them into danger more than once, and he ends up hospitalized with serious consequences. They take refuge with Patrick’s parents to hide from their pursuers and give Patrick time to recuperate. His mother is wonderful, every woman’s dream mother-in-law.

I am not sure how I missed this series, the March 2021 title is the twenty-second, but it never crossed my reading radar until the great Lume Books ebook giveaway in April. (Dear Lume Books, Thank you. thank you, thank you!) It’s interesting that neither Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, nor Kirkus have reviewed this first book, so they missed it too. The characters are marvelous, there is enough action to suit any thrill seeker, and the mystery is wrapped up with a satisfying thud while leaving the door open for the couple’s future adventures. Highly, highly recommended.

·         File Size: 1025 KB

·         Print Length: 288 pages

·         Publisher: Lume Books (October 6, 2015)

·         Publication Date: October 6, 2015

·         ASIN: B016AIIFGG

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Done Deal by Tony Berry

For 48 hours in April, Lume Books, a small independent publisher in London, made 50 of their most popular digital books free to anyone in any amount. I shamelessly took advantage of this lavish offer and downloaded more than 15 titles. (I am too embarrassed by my greed to count the exact number.) In very slight recompense I am recognizing their prodigious generosity here. One of the books offered is by Tony Berry, a journalist from the UK who lived in Australia for years, where he wrote his first Bromo Perkins book, Done Deal. Published in 2008, it won a New South Wales Genre Fiction Award, as did the second book in the series. The subsequent books about Perkins were equally successful. After a residency at the Centre for Excellence in Banff, Canada, Berry returned to Cornwall where he is working on his family history and writing the next book.

Bromo Perkins is a former British intelligence operative who left the bureau by mutual agreement after a flubbed assignment and migrated to Australia, where he opened a travel agency. He lives quietly, enjoying the culture and ambience of his adopted country. He’s trying to wake up at his usual Melbourne coffee shop one morning when he’s approached by an unknown woman, who shows him photographs of his recent weekend with a married lover. Bromo has no idea how the photos were obtained but Aurelia’s husband has a reputation for violence. When this stranger tells him to go to a home and dispose of the mess in it or expect to learn the photographs have turned up in the hands of a jealous husband, he chooses what seems to be the less risky of the alternatives.

Arriving at the apartment in question, he finds a body, that of a well-known property developer, who has been brutalized and left for dead. Not at all what he was expecting, but he calls a friend and they drive a car with the body into the closest river. From there, the action kicks in and does not stop. The property developer seems to have been in the midst of a battle between local residents in favor of indiscriminate development and residents who wanted everything where it was 25 years ago. Two of the property developers have fallen out over the plans for Melbourne’s future. They are not above using underhanded methods, including kidnapping and murder, to get their way.

Well-written, fast-moving, original plot, everything I could look for in a thriller. The Australian slang did throw me here and there, but that’s what Google is for.

·         File Size: 1795 KB

·         Print Length: 232 pages

·         Publisher: Lume Books (November 7, 2016)

·         Publication Date: November 7, 2016

·         Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC

·         Language: English

·         ASIN: B01N90V0YN

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.