What's not to like about an English village mystery that takes place ten years after World War II and concerns a bookshop? That's what I thought, too, when I picked up Merryn Allingham's very first Flora Steele mystery, The Bookshop Murder. As I began to read and the pages turned, it got even better. Buried treasure? A priest hole? Secret passages? Definitely my cup of tea.

Allingham puts us right in the era with little details like Flora delivering books by bicycle and the fact that meat had come off rationing only the year before and people still felt eating it was a wicked indulgence. Flora's Aunt Violet, who left her the bookshop, lost her fiancé in World War I and raised Flora after a car accident killed her parents. (How many parents have lost their lives due to car accidents in crime fiction I wonder?) The village also plays its part in the story by spreading all sorts of scandalous gossip and whispers of gruesome doings and haunted bookshops. The coup de grâce involves a bus driver in a neighboring village, but I'll let you find out for yourselves what he did.

The mystery is a good one, and so is the setting, so... what about the characters? Any traditional or cozy mystery worth its salt has to have characters that readers can care about. The Bookshop Murder rises to the occasion in this, too. Flora is intelligent, hard-working, and even though she seems to know how to get her own way, her life so far has been one of doing for others and putting her own dreams aside. Once she decides to enlist the help of mystery writer Jack Carrington, the story shifts gears and becomes even more enjoyable to read.

Jack has his own past that readers have to learn about. He's decided to shut himself away in a house outside the village, and he's hired a young boy to deliver food and books so he doesn't have to deal with anyone else. That is until the boy becomes ill and Flora decides a mystery writer is the perfect person to help her solve a crime. Watching the two work together and become used to each other bodes well for future books in the series.

If mysteries reminiscent of Miss Marple and Miss Seeton are your favorites, then by all means get your hands on a copy of Merryn Allingham's The Bookshop Murder. It has all the hallmarks of being the start of a beautiful reading relationship.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)

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This mystery takes place in England in 1955. I tried thinking about life in America when I was less than ten. I remember that people rode the bus more than today, and neighbors were much more communicative. People only had a little money, and few goods were available. I remember my grandfather sold the family car, and the family was horrified. He reasoned that it was one of the few ways to get cash because cars were in demand but not available in large numbers (it was after WW II).

I'm waxing nostalgic because I'm trying to show that the author got the time (and life situations) right in this book. People walked everywhere or rode a bus. The author points out that the successful writer Jack Carrington wore clothes left over from his ration tickets for WW II. That was a nice touch. WW II crippled England, and life took a long time to recover.

The story is an engaging mystery about a dead Australian man who had just become twenty-one during a visit to Abbeymead, England. Worse than that, he was found in Flora Steele's bookshop after breaking in through a back window. There are lots of interesting red herrings. Jack Carrington, a crime writer, assists Flora in her adventures. This was so compelling that I had difficulty putting it aside (to get work done). Overall = 4.5 stars.

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