Review: The Antique Store Detective By Clare Chase
Synopsis
Meet Bella Winter. She loves vintage clothes, antiques and… solving crimes?
Bella Winter moved to charming Hope Eaton for some peace and quiet after quitting her busy city job. She delights in spending time in her little antique store on top of the hill, hunting for bargains at auctions, and getting to know everybody – because if there’s one thing Bella’s good at, it’s solving other people’s problems.
But her peaceful life is overturned when she finds eccentric local historian Professor Oliver Barton dead in the ruins of Raven Hall, a trowel lying near his outstretched hand. At first, Bella is like everyone else: saddened by a tragic accident. But then her colleague John asks her to dig deeper. Because the dead man gave him an ancient coin he should never have had, and John thinks he was murdered.
It turns out the professor was hunting for buried treasure in the middle of the night. But who would have wanted him dead? And who are the four suspicious women he told John yabout, calling them the queens of hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades…?
As Bella delves into the case she uncovers a hoard of suspects: the lord of the manor, a secretive group of treasure hunters, the dead man’s desperate niece and her no-good son. And when another local historian takes a fatal tumble, she is certain that the answers lie in the antiques the professor stole.But can she solve the crime before someone tries to bury her?
A delightful cozy mystery introducing your new favourite amateur sleuth. Fans of Fiona Leitch, Faith Martin and Agatha Christie will love The Antique Store Detective!
Review
This book is set in the historical and picturesque English town of Hope Eaton, inspired by Bridgnorth in Shropshire. I loved this setting and could visualise walking around and exploring. Bella Winter owns an antiques shop called Vintage Winter, where she adores the items that she has on sale, wanting her customers to know the stories behind each object.
Her peaceful life in the town is overturned when she finds Professor Oliver Barton dead in the ruins of Raven Hall. Bella believes this to be a tragic accident until her co-worker John asks her to dig a little deeper as he believes that Oliver may have been murdered.
Bella puts together a group of friends (mainly from the Jenks family) and starts to investigate the possible suspects.
I liked the book as a whole, the descriptions of the town and the passion for antiques came across strong. I thought nighthawking was an interesting subject to be pursued in the book and it was fun learning about the ruins as the book went on.
The thing I struggled with the most was the sheer number of people involved in the investigation, how they were mostly related to one another and how repetitive it made the dialogue as things were often seen through Bella’s eyes and then discussed with the group. This slowed the pace of the book down for me.
I enjoyed the book, it was a good cosy crime mystery, especially the ending of the book, it was a twist that I did not expect. I would read other books in the series to see how the relationships develop between the characters.
Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for sending this book for review, all opinions are my own.
Comments
Post a Comment