Paging through the Death of An Avid Reader for my summertime Series-ous Reading

This past July, I was happy to have a bit of a staycation with my latest Series-ous Reading selection that had a nice mix of excitement, mystery and library love.

Frances Brody's Death of An Avid Reader is the sixth entry in her series of Kate Shackleton mysteries, set in post-WWI. Kate is a widow that still holds out a bit of hope that her husband(officially listed as missing in action) is somehow alive and coming home to her.

In the meantime, Kate is a detective and most often times asked to find missing persons such as the secretly given up for adoption daughter of Lady Coulton. Her Ladyship become pregnant while her husband was off fighting in the war so keeping that baby well out of sight was a major priority.

Before Kate can fully start that investigation, she's pressed to witness an exorcism at the Leeds Library by Dr. Potter, a member of the library board who finds the notion shared by the staff of a ghost haunting the place amusing at best. However, to allay those persistent fears, a priest has been summoned and Kate reluctantly finds herself,along with the head librarian, taking part in this late night ceremony:

As it turns out, the only scary moment during that "exorcism" is the discovery of Dr. Potter's body in the basement. Trapped under a knocked over bookcase, with a rather valuable rare book not far from him, it appears as if a thief is to blame.

However, another find causes the case to take a different turn. Hiding in a distant corner of the basement is Umberto, the local organ grinder who has not been out and about lately, due perhaps to the cold weather.

Umberto, as Kate's past medical training has alerted her, is deathly ill from pneumonia and taken to the hospital. Despite the fact that he's clearly in no condition to harm anyone,let alone Dr. Potter, the police quickly point the finger of blame at the elderly Italian immigrant. Kate finds this appalling and despite not being officially part of the police inquiry, she decides to look firmly into the matter.

What she does discover is that Umberto did have a brief meeting with Dr. Potter before the murder but that had nothing to do with books. Umberto's pet monkey intrigued the mathematician for some private studies of his own involving animals and education. Kate happens to have that monkey on hand as the creature stowed away in her car that fateful night, making her even more compelled to solve the case:

 

As she looks further into things, Kate suspects that her long lost daughter case may overlap into this murder mystery as the father of that adopted child happened to be a librarian and that girl may have unknowingly followed in her parent's literary footsteps.

With a few surprises along the way, Kate does get far beyond the local police in both respects but can she find the killer and the girl before it's too late? I have read this series quite out of order(plan to read book two this fall as the last of my Second Acts) yet these stories are so well written that you would hardly feel out of place no matter where you started.

Frances Brody blends historical fiction with murder mystery as skillfully as a brewer might stir together tea leaves, making these stories a charming mix of comfortable yet chilling all at once.

Her characters are as fully sketched as the art work displayed upon the book covers, with Kate being paired up with such folk as Mrs. Sugden, her pragmatic housekeeper and Jim Sykes, an ex-cop who is more than just a right hand man. The subtle settings of these stories frame a wider picture of the seemingly simple life back then, making Kate's detective tales uniquely thrilling.

I do hope that someday, the Kate Shackleton books become adapted for television as they would do very well along side the likes of Agatha Raisin or Queens of Mystery, if you ask me:

So, while A Medal for Murder and Murder in the Afternoon will be appearing this fall in my Series-ous Reading coverage, I also have another long running set of mysteries to keep up with.

Yes, it's more Hannah Swensen time as I dig into Apple Turnover Murder, where one of the title treats lands near the dead body of Bradford Ramsey, who was her college professor and a rather unscrupulous Romeo to say the least.

Finding him dead is bad enough but hoping to hunt down his killer without anyone in town finding out about their mutual past is a troubling challenge even for Hannah! I know this story takes place in the summer but apple flavored desserts just make me think of autumn, which is why I suppose that this was my choice for a tasty late summer read: