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The Boat Runner: A Novel

Devin Murphy

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In the tradition of All The Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale, comes an incandescent debut...

The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker's Guide to Growing Older

Robert L. Weber and Carol Orsborn

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As we enter the years beyond midlife, our quest for an approach to aging takes on added urgency and...

ClareR (5996 KP) rated A Shadowed Livery (Inspector James Given Investigations #1) in Books

Sep 16, 2019

A really well written police procedural

A Shadowed Livery is a police procedural very much in the vein of an Agatha Christie novel. It’s set in 1938, just as the rumblings of war begin and National Socialism and Fascism raise their heads in Germany. DI James Givens has been pulled off the case that he was working on (the murder of a Jewish butcher - the guilty men have been hanged, but there’s still work to be done) and sent to a small village in the English countryside, to wrap up the deaths of three people (mother, son and fiancée) at Grovestock House, where Sir Arthur Barleigh and his family live. DI Given has been told that it’s a simple case of murder/ suicide, but of course it develops into anything but that.

I very much enjoyed this - the style in which it was written felt just right for the time period, and there was great attention to detail. I liked how Given’s background is revealed as the story progresses, and how relevant it was to the time in history.

The mystery itself had me guessing up to the end, and it has a great ending! I love it when I’m kept guessing to the final pages. DI Given is a very likeable character, if a little naive in some ways - but that’s rather nice really. It lends him that human touch.

I’ll be interested to see what happens in the second book as we edge closer to war. I’d like to see how DI Given gets on!

Many thanks to Sapere Books for my copy of this book to read and review. I will be preordering the next book for when it comes out next month (October 2019)!