Rough And Deadly
Everyone knows Abe Compton’s Headbender cider is as rough as a cider can get. But is it deadly?
When self-styled ‘lady of the manor’, Margot Duckett-Trimble, announces she wouldn’t be seen dead drinking the stuff, who could have foreseen that, only a few days later, she’d be found, face down, in a vat of it?
Kat Latcham’s no stranger to murder. Indeed, the once ‘sleepy’ Somerset village of Much Winchmoor is fast gaining a reputation as the murder capital of the West Country and is ‘as sleepy as a kid on Christmas Eve’ when it’s discovered there’s a murderer running loose in the community again.
Kat has known Abe all her life, and she is sure that, although he had motive, he didn’t kill Margot. But as she investigates, the murderer strikes again. And the closer Kat gets to finding out who the real killer is, the closer to danger she becomes.
This second Much Winchmoor mystery is once again spiked with humour and sprinkled with romance – plus a cast of colourful characters, including a manic little dog called Prescott whose bite is definitely worse than his bark.
My review
This is a very entertaining and lively cosy mystery, but there is a more menacing thread of violence running through it too. However, the two elements of serious but slightly town-in-cheek murder and the secondary one of more realistic threat work well together in this author’s hands.
This is the second book about Kat, who’s moved back home after her city career crumbles. She does odd jobs and some reporting around Much Winchmoor, and keeps tuned in to all the gossip in her mother’s hair salon. However, don’t worry if you haven’t read the first book (Murder Served Cold) since this one works fine as a standalone. You quickly pick up all you need to know as the author deftly weaves in the essentials without them being intrusive.
Kat does tend to blunder in rather naively, but with the best of intentions. Fortunately there’s usually someone with a bit more sense to keep an eye on her! She’s a larger-than-life, lovely character, who takes life’s problems on the chin (work, mother and car troubles mainly) and never hesitates to roll up her sleeves and get stuck in. She’s helped and hindered by the eccentric and colourful residents of the village, both human and canine.
The writing flows and the plot is clever. This is the sort of book you just can’t put down once you start reading because it’s so enjoyable in every way.
Purchase Link
https://mybook.to/roughanddeadly
About the author
Paula Williams is living her dream. She’s written all her life – her earliest efforts involved blackmailing her unfortunate younger brothers into appearing in her plays and pageants. But it’s only in recent years that she discovered to her surprise that people with better judgement than her brothers actually liked what she wrote and were prepared to pay her for it.
Now, she writes every day in a lovely, book-lined study in her home in Somerset, where she lives with her husband and a handsome but not always obedient rescue Dalmatian called Duke. She started out writing fiction for women’s magazines (and still does) but has recently branched out into longer fiction. She also writes a monthly column, Ideas Store, for the writers’ magazines, Writers’ Forum.
But, as with the best of dreams, she worries that one day she’s going to wake up and find she still has to bully her brothers into reading ‘the play what she wrote’.
Social Media Links –
Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/paula.williams.author
Blog. paulawilliamswriter.wordpress.com
Twitter. @paulawilliams44
Website. paulawilliamswriter.co.uk
Elizabeth Mundy’s grandmother was a Hungarian immigrant to America who raised five children on a chicken farm in Indiana. An English Literature graduate from Edinburgh University, Elizabeth is a marketing director for an investment firm and lives in London with her messy husband and two young children. A Clean Canvas is the second book in the Lena Szarka mystery series about a Hungarian cleaner who turns detective.
Isabel and her mother are back in action, even though Isabel is still recovering from the last escapade. Her new case is an apparent suicide, and, as we both hope and expect there’s a lot more than initially meets the eye in this investigation. The wonderful ‘Old Farts’ are an invaluable help with their wisdom, nosiness and constructivce cantankerounsess!
Joan Livingston is the author of novels for adult and young readers. Checking the Traps, published by Crooked Cat Books, is the third in the mystery series featuring Isabel Long, a longtime journalist who becomes an amateur P.I. The first two are Chasing the Case and Redneck’s Revenge.
‘In Peppermint Peril’ is an ingeniously crafted mystery that’s a real treat to read. 
A Hollow Sky is a thoughtful and thought-provoking mystery with a definitely unsettling undercurrent of menace. It unrolls slowly to begin with, but as it gains momentum it really begins to sweep you along as the tension mounts. This is the result of excellent, careful writing.
Born in the UK and raised in South Africa, M. Sean Coleman developed a love for reading and writing novels in his early teens, thanks to two incredibly passionate English teachers who infected him with their love of words and stories. Over the intervening years, he has written film and television drama, cross-platform series, an interactive children’s storybook and a graphic novel series.
This is a fast-paced, enjoyable cosy with an added splash of romance – definitely my favourite combination in a book! Kat makes for a lively and very likeable heroine. We really feel for her, forced to return to the mothership for a while and, in so doing, having to relinquish some of her independence. It also means she’ll run into a few people she’d far rather avoid…
Paula Williams is living her dream. She has written all her life – her earliest efforts involved blackmailing her unfortunate younger brothers into appearing in her plays and pageants. But it is only in recent years, when she turned her attention to writing short stories and serials for women’s magazines that she discovered, to her surprise, that people with better judgement than her brothers actually liked what she wrote and were prepared to pay her for it.
I have to admit that I’d expected a rather darker mystery from the cover, but this is a very lively and subtly amusing novel. It’s one in a series but you don’t need to have read the preceding books, although that would be the ideal scenario. You get enough info to work out who’s who and what’s what, and can pick up on the running themes.
Before turning to crime, Alice Castle had a long career as a feature writer on national newspapers including the Daily Express, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Alice grew up in south London and, after a brief stint in Brussels (where her first novel, Hot Chocolate, is set) she is back where she belongs, dreaming up adventures for her heroine, amateur detective and single mum Beth Haldane. Alice is married with two children, two stepchildren and two cats. Find out more about her London Murder Mystery series on her website, www.alicecastleauthor.com. Death in Dulwich was published in September 2017 by Crooked Cat Books and was #1 in the Amazon Satire/Detective charts in the UK, US, Canada, France, Spain and Germany. The Girl in the Gallery came out in December 2017 and the third in the series, Calamity in Camberwell, was published on 13th August 2018. Revenge on the Rye will follow in 2019, with more books in the pipeline.
This is a spirited cozy mystery featuring mature sleuth Isabel who may only be an amateur at the moment, but is training to become a professional private detective. She was let go from her job at a newspaper a few years ago and was kicking her heels. Solving mysteries, like the ones her mother so enjoys reading about, seems to suit her personality and skills very well.
Joan Livingston is the author of novels for adult and young readers. Redneck’s Revenge, published by Crooked Cat Books, is the second in the mystery series featuring Isabel Long, a long-time journalist who becomes an amateur P.I. The first is Chasing the Case.
I’m a huge fan of cosy mysteries, and especially ones with witty titles, so how could I resist ‘On the Monet’? And I’m so glad I couldn’t, because it’s a super book.
Malcolm Parnell has a passion for painting and teaches art and drawing skills when he is not working on his next novel.