THE AUNT BESSIE PAGE: Four of 26 (TWENTY-SIX!) BOOKS IN THE DIANA XARISSA SERIES REVIEWED

AUNT BESSIE ASSUMES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #1)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie assumes that she'll have the beach all to herself on a cold, wet, and windy March morning just after sunrise, then she stumbles (almost literally) over a dead body.

Elizabeth (Bessie) Cubbon, aged somewhere between free bus pass (60) and telegram from the Queen (100), has lived her entire adult life in a small cottage on Laxey beach. For most of those years, she's been in the habit of taking a brisk morning walk along the beach. Dead men have never been part of the scenery before.

Aunt Bessie assumes that the dead man died of natural causes, then the police find the knife in his chest.

Try as she might, Bessie just can't find anything to like about the young widow that she provides tea and sympathy to in the immediate aftermath of finding the body. There isn't much to like about the rest of the victim's family either.

Aunt Bessie assumes that the police will have the case wrapped up in no time at all, then she finds a second body.

Can Bessie and her friends find the killer before she ends up as the next victim?

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: First in a cozy mystery series set on the gorgeous 1990s Isle of Man, this Venerable-Friend-Kath-recommended story gets my seal of approval. What makes it so enjoyable is the acerbic-spinster heroine/sleuth (both apply to Aunt Bessie in this book). So I'm pleased to present my first post-strokes review of the delight that is Bessie.

If you're a fan of cozies you already know you're not going to be gore-splashed, or challenged to keep up with the pace of a police investigation; and that the cops will treat the amateur sleuth completely unrealistically as a colleague. This is, of course, nonsense. But if you can go with the suspension of disbelief that mysteries require it's definitely a good trip to make with a quest, and a character-driven story about a charming group of small-town friends who, regardless of their ages and genders and jobs, genuinely form a close community of supportive friends.

The mystery here is not hugely difficult to work out; but the stakes are personal by the time the solution hoves into view. If it hadn't been so, I would've turned the last page of the book and immediately forgotten the whole thing; shifting from resolving the murders of innocent people to keeping Aunt Bessie safe was a bolt of storytelling inspiration that kept me very invested in the proceedings. The Scooby-group the author's assembled is going to be the make-or-break as the series moves on through its 26 (TWENTY-SIX!!) volumes, as always with cozies. The beginning is promising enough that I've already used part of a gift card to get Aunt Bessie Believes (reviewed below) with the rest of that very generous gift card (thanks, Jeff!). I'm recommending them based on the ease of investing in the set-up and setting; the pleasures of being entertained by genuinely nice people doing their best and choosing to do the right thing at every turn; and the pleasantly direct yet descriptive prose.

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AUNT BESSIE BELIEVES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #2)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey Teare is just about the most disagreeable woman she's ever had the misfortune to meet.

Elizabeth Cubbon, (Aunt Bessie to nearly everyone), is somewhere past sixty, and old enough to ignore the rude woman that does her best to ruin the first session of the beginning Manx language class they are both taking. Moirrey's sudden death is harder to ignore.

Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey's death was the result of the heart condition that Moirrey always complained about.

The police investigation, however, suggests that someone switched some of the dead woman's essential medications for something far more deadly.

Aunt Bessie believes that she and her friends can find the killer.

But with Doona suspended from work and spending all of her time with the dead woman's long-lost brother, Hugh caught up in a brand new romance and Inspector Rockwell chasing after a man that might not even exist, Bessie finds herself believing that someone might just get away with murder.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: I didn't care who killed Moirrey, I wanted her dead, and felt as though a wee tiny bit of blind-eye-turning by starchy overly-upright Aunt Bessie would've improved the story 1000%. Take a page from Poirot...sometimes leaving stuff alone serves Justice if not the law. I disliked The Twist at the very end which wasn't really a well-done one, and felt completely underwhelmed by The Reveal, which pretty much got telegraphed much too early on as well. A new favorite character gets foregrounded, of course, that's the good bit about cozies, but on the whole I'm glad I've already got books 3 & 4 for free or I'd be weighing my options after what I consider to be a lazy piece of plotting that marred the many and still fun pleasures of spending Aunt Bessie time.

I will recommend to you that you not read these books while peckish or you'll be the size of a zeppelin before you finish this book. They eat well and often, these characters!

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AUNT BESSIE CONSIDERS
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #3)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie considers it an honour to be giving a presentation about her research at a conference at the Manx Museum.

Miss Elizabeth Cubbon is known as “Aunt Bessie” to nearly everyone in her hometown of Laxey. While she never earned a college degree, she’s become something of an expert in the history of the island that she’s called home for all of her adult life. Once she turned sixty, she stopped counting how many years that includes.

Aunt Bessie considers it unfair when the entire conference schedule is thrown into disarray by Mack Dickson’s sudden arrival.

Mack promises that what he has to say is important enough to warrant the upheaval. But even more turmoil follows when Bessie discovers Mack’s body only a short time after he’s finished giving his speech.

Aunt Bessie considers Police Inspector Peter Corkill a poor substitute for her friend, John Rockwell.

But the Manx Museum is out of Rockwell’s jurisdiction and that means Corkill is in charge of the investigation, no matter what Bessie thinks. With Corkill insisting that Mack’s death was probably an unfortunate accident, Mack’s slides that shocked the conference disappear. Bessie finds herself drawn into another investigation, and she’s determined to drag her friends, Rockwell, Doona and Hugh, in with her.

This is the third book in the Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Series.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: Fun and fluffy...lots of food eaten, a rotter murdered who comme d'habitude with La Xarissa just flat needed killin' and nobody shoulda done more than tut unconvincingly about these awful modern times and scarfed another jammy dodger or two and left it alone. I hope Aunt Bessie has occasion to delve into the murder of someone who's decent instead of another craptastic creep.

The setting Xarissa created for this outing, an archaeology conference about Manx history, was very interesting; I was especially pleased that Aunt Bessie's avocation as an amateur historian got further development...though it's not thorough-going or detailed, I was satisfied that she was presented as a colleague known and accepted by the professionals in the conference. Several of those professional people from this story will be returning or I have lost my spidey-senses along with my left side's strength and dexterity; and a big ol' hint about who'll end up in some bad trouble eftsoons got plonked before us.

The British obsession with tea remains opaque to me. Stuff's nasty, yet these folk swill absolute hogsheads of it, even polluting it with sugar and milk like it wasn't foul enough already. Still and all, they're good company, are Bessie and her Scoobygroup, and the stories feel so genuinely honestly reflective of the author's worldview that I continue to look forward to my next outing with them.

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AUNT BESSIE DECIDES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #4) Kindle Edition
$3.99

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie decides that she and her closest friends should have an enjoyable night out.

Elizabeth Cubbon (known to almost everyone as Aunt Bessie) has made many friends over the lifetime that she’s lived in the village of Laxey, but few have been as close as the ones she’s made recently. Bessie relied on Doona Moore, Hugh Watterson and John Rockwell to help her through several recent murder investigations she’s found herself caught up in. Now she wants to treat them all to an open-air performance of a Shakespearean play on the grounds of historic Peel Castle.

Aunt Bessie decides that it doesn’t much matter what show the troupe is performing as long as she and her friends can relax and have fun.

Two members have recently left the theatre company. Now the troupe has thrown aside its usual repertoire in favour of a play written by one of their own. When those two former members appear in the audience, though, someone decides to get rid of one of them for good.

Aunt Bessie decides to give the show another chance, but a second performance almost ends in a second tragedy.

With all of the suspects blaming one another, and several of them turning up on the doorstep of Bessie’s cottage, it’s time for Bessie to decide to solve this murder herself.

This is the fourth book in the Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Series.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: I was ready for the action to begin well before it did...but one of the charms of the Bessie stories is how she and her Scoobygroup hang together even when not solving crimes, and that's what a goodly part of this story does. It's not a bad thing per se, but I was, as stated, ready to get the body on the slab (so to speak) and figure out why the killer chose the time and place for the crime. I'll be honest...the theatre troupe was made up of nasty, unkind, un-Bessie-able people who won't reappear (if anyone does I'll be very surprised, not least because they're all just visiting from the US) who drink and cuss and comport themselves quite unbecomingly.

Xarissa has a low opinion of her countryfolk. As I tend to share that trait with her, I wasn't put off by it. I just don't see how the clear and rational deductions that lead her to the murderer's identity did not occur to her far earlier.

A quibble only. I'm not here for the puzzles, I'm here for the Scoobygroup and the food! Fair warning: do not start here. Start at the beginning or there will be a great loss of grounding in the whys and hows of Aunt Bessie's special little (term used advisedly) world.

THE TURTLE BOY, horror on several levels

THE TURTLE BOY
KEALAN PATRICK BURKE (Timmy Quinn #1)
Kindle edition –or– Kobo in Canada
FREE!!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: School is out and summer has begun. For eleven year old Timmy Quinn and his best friend Pete Marshall, the dreary town of Delaware, Ohio, becomes a place of magic, hidden treasure and discovery.

But on the day they encounter a strange young boy sitting on the bank of Myers Pond, a pond playground rumor says may hide turtles the size of Buicks, everything changes.

For it soon becomes apparent that dark secrets abound in the little community, secrets which come cupped in the hands of the dead, and in a heartbeat, Timmy and Pete's summer of wonder becomes a season of terror, betrayal and murder.

***DISCLAIMER***I know the author via social media. He didn't ask me to read or review the book.

My Review: Horror isn't my usual stomping grounds. I don't read much of it because I'm so seldom horrified, so often amused to the point of laughing out loud. For real laughing out loud. Not this time.

My longtime Goodreads friend Dan reviewed this book some time back and that convinced me to Kindle it up. I liked it fine. I even got goosebumps twice.

What horrified me in the intended fashion was the relationship between Pete and his father. The supernatural goins-on I could see why the adults dismissed as imaginitive kidness. I did myself. But no one who's ever raised, been around, or even been a subteen could ignore the horror of what happens to Pete. His father Wayne was a monster from the second we meet Pete. The scariest kind of monster: the unfightable one. There's nothing an adult can do, really, when a situation like Pete's comes to light. Report to the overstretched child protective services? Would that help or hurt? No right answer. No good answer. That right there defines horror in real life.

There are supernatural elements in this tale as well. These were not my favorite moments, as anyone who knows me might guess. But the way Author Burke handles them won my skeptical heart over in the end. The reason he adduces to the apparition we see makes sense to me. I can suspend my immediate eyeroll reflex for the idea of psychic sensitivity as opposed to Manifestations Of EVIL *cue horror movie laugh* which, well, c'mon they're just silly aren't they? I mean really.

But then there's Author Burke's way with words. This novella, in roundabout 80pp, transported me to a place I've never been (and am in no rush to go to). I like atmosphere in my reading, and here's a sample of Burke's:

In the field beyond, high grass flowed beneath the gentle caress of the slightest of breezes. The land was framed by dying walnut trees, rotten arms severed by lightning long gone, poking up into the sky as if vying for the attention of a deity who could save them.

And just like that I'm there.

But even more important to me is the sense that the childhood of one Timmy Quinn is now over. It took one touch of the supernatural to change the boy into a manchild. It is irrevocable, this change, and it happens to all of us; usually it's not this moment of connection to the numinous realms, but the moment itself is universal:

The Turtle Boy's words returned to him again and again, nagging at him and begging to be decoded: You don't know who did it. When you do, remember what you saw and let it change you. Maybe he deserves to die.

Yes lawd! I been there, I witness, I testify. It's one of the first before-and-after moments that almost everyone remembers. We have them fairly frequently in the course of childhood, but they're just part of the scenery. This one is, for most people I've ever known, memorable enough to stick in the front of one's mind. Timmy Quinn's is especially memorable, I think we can agree, and it bids fair to stick in the front of *my* mind!

The reason to read the book is, though, that one enjoys the experience of the writer writing his best stuff for you. I liked the ideas, the insights, the writer's imagination coming to the fore and leaving me with a few surprises:

He sat so close to the water they could almost hear gravity groaning from the strain of keeping him from falling in.

It's free, forevermore. Download the darn thing and make it part of your mental furniture for that reason alone! But there are many more pleasures to be had for them as wants 'em.

GHOSTS OF TSAVO, African paranormal lion-hunting with ghostly husbands, possessed zebras, and nasty Dursleyesque families!

GHOSTS OF TSAVO Society for Paranormals #1
VERED EHSANI
Kindle Edition
FREE!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Armed with Victorian etiquette, a fully loaded walking stick and a dead husband, Beatrice Knight arrives in colonial Kenya desperate for a pot of tea and a pinch of cinnamon. But she’ll need more than that if she’s to unravel the mystery of the Ghosts of Tsavo without being eaten in the process. All this while surviving the machinations of her best friend’s dashing godfather and the efforts of her safari guide to feed her to any lion willing to drag her away. What is a ghost-chasing widow to do?

This is Case #1 in the “Society for Paranormals” series: A series concerning dead husbands, African legends and the search for a perfect spot of tea. For those readers who adore “Pride & Prejudice” and would love to experience “The Parasol Protectorate” set in colonial Africa, this is for you!

My Review: A possessed zebra, "ghost" lions who turn out to be shape-shifters, an automaton with many exciting characteristics (including a ghost-in-residence who happens to be the narratrix's dead husband), a Dursleyesque family far from Privet Lane and therefore even more disagreeable than usual...it's all here, and all the moving parts are managed by our narratrix, Mrs. Knight. Bee to her most unpleasant aunt, Mrs. Steward, whose unpaid labor keeps the Steward house running. Certainly Jonas, their one African servant, isn't much help. He's unfamiliar with tea and toast, those urgent requirements of the entire British race. He has a wonderful survival knack, though, simply listening to Mrs. Steward bloviate and inserting "yes, mama" into the spaces made by her inhalations to bloviate some more.

The barely-more-than-tent-city that is Nairobi, British East Africa, upon the Steward ménage's arrival, meets with vocal disapproval from the ladies of the party, though Bobby the 12 year old son is unaware of anything about the place except that he'll get to go lion hunting. Bee, in her ever-unflappable way (how would one frighten a lady accustomed to sniffing out and dealing with werewolves?), sets the house to rights just in time to greet her shipboard friend Cilla, come to Nairobi to stay with her handsome, unsettlingly odd godfather Mr. Timmons. The Steward ladies find Mr. Timmons' presence makes the African savannah much more palatable. Lilly, the daughter of the house, is in the market for a husband as she was forced to leave London on the eve of her grand Coming Out. Bee doesn't quite know why Mr. Timmons affects her so negatively, but as an investigator of things paranormal, she has learned the long and hard way to trust the prickings of her thumbs.

But, as is usual in slightly romantic books, Mrs. Knight and Mr. Timmons are thrown together to solve the mystery of the "ghost" lions while preventing the baying packs of foolish British hunters from killing their mutual prey before the two paranormals can discover what exactly they are. As the hunt fails spectacularly on its first night (lions are, keep in mind, nocturnal hunters) and the camp is brought to a state of swirling chaos by the disappearance of the aforementioned automaton (and with it the lively ghost of Gideon Knight), seeds are sown that will reap a bitter harvest quite soon.

A mysterious, tall, dark, and handsome African paranormal contact called Kam has been communicating with Bee since her arrival in Nairobi. He appears and disappears with disconcerting silence and always utters unsettling, sibylline warning-cum-instructions that Bee must decipher in order to navigate hazardous paranormal surroundings new to her. It is his major revelation to Bee about the nature of the ghost/shape-shifting lions that propels the wild, careening ride in the last third of the story. Bee and Kam hatch a desperate plan to save the more recalcitrant of the target lions from the bumbling Great White Hunters...and unexpectedly from Mr. Timmons as well. After the comical success of this silly plan, a conversation between Bee and Mr. Timmons reveals information she would greatly prefer not to know about the living and desperately needs not to believe about the dead.

It's a rollicking good ride, similar in its tenor and pace to the much-beloved Chronicles of St Marys by Jodi Taylor. I'm very much looking forward to future installments in the series, three more already being available. I expect that they will fill in some bits of Bee's story, such as an alluded-to previous trip to Africa, West Africa that time, that has left Bee with a disfigured right ear and a goddess who appears as a praying mantis--yuck!--of any size she wishes--yikes!--as a bitter enemy.

Yes indeed, a good time will be had by all!