Murder Among Us

For those of you who have not heard of Ann Granger and her Mitchell and Markby series, let me tell you that this series is a winner. For anyone who likes the English village mystery with a bit of a modern twist, this series fits the bill. Ms. Granger has a wonderful sense of humour and her characters are believable and likeable. The plot moves along nicely, and the mystery is always just a little hard to figure out. The relationship that is developing between Meredith and Alan is developed nicely with each story, and as they work together to try to solved tricky mysteries it is fun to see their relationship grow. These characters are very realistic! This book is about the death of a local woman in the wine cellar of a newly renovated hotel in Markby's area. Markby has to go a long way back in history to figure this one out, but Meredith is also there to help him get to the right answer.

Chief Inspector Markby lives in the quiet little English village of Bamford, into which "progress" is intruding in the form of a new resort hotel, built on the shell of an old Victorian mansion. Predictably, not everyone in town is pleased about the new resort. During the grand opening festivities, a woman is fatally knifed in the wine cellar. The victim, who was attractive and financially comfortable, was also unusually secretive about her history and her private life.And so the hunt for the killer begins, in the typical style of an English-village mystery. Granger is a thoroughly professional and accomplished mystery writer, and she delivers the goods that readers expect from an English village mystery: a variety of suspects and motives, a well-paced narrative, and a non-obvious resolution. There is enough substance here to prevent the book from falling into the category of pure and empty fluff (a virtue which cannot be taken for granted with all English village mysteries). I didn't find the characterizations particularly compelling, and the relationship between Markby and his girlfriend Meredith Mitchell could have been more vividly portrayed. Still, the book is successful at being exactly what it is supposed to be: bedside reading for those who enjoy a comfortable whodunit.