Joanna Challis

"Fresh Meat" by Susan Amper for Criminal Element

“Last night I dreamt I went to Thornleigh again.” Thornleigh? Villa of Death by Joanna Challis is the third in a series featuring Daphne du Maurier, amateur sleuth and budding author who spends so much time in her own head working through the permutations of her most famous novel that deadly dealings serve only as way stations on her road to another adjective.

It is the summer of 1927, and Daphne is headed to Thornleigh for the wedding of a friend. The friend’s husband is poisoned after the ceremony; there is a second murder and a kidnapping. Suspects and red herrings abound. Daphne even gets engaged to the dashing Major Browning. But it’s not enough to keep a reader engaged.

(Read the rest of http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/12/fresh-meat-joanna-challis-the-villa... )… (mer)

Debut of Daphne du Maurier Mysteries It is a historical cozy/amateur sleuth with the main character is the 21 year old Daphne du Maurier, aspiring author (who later writes Rebecca that becomes a movie). Set in 1928 Cornwall England.

Daphne is visiting Cornwall to research local history at an Abbey and encounters a teenage girl, Lianne Hartley, leaning over a beautiful young woman's dead body on the beach during a storm. Lianne identifies the dead woman as Victoria Bastion, the local town girl who was about to marry Lianne's brother, Lord David Hartley. Daphne soon meets other members of the aristocratic Hartley family, whose complex relationships and great house, an Elizabethan mansion called Padthaway, cast a spell on her.

Since Ms. du Maurier's family is well known and friends with the Prime Minister she is welcome at the great Padthaway, encouraged to be the friend of Lianne and the grieving groom takes an interest in her. All of which gives her easy access to snoop and question.

The young miss du Maurier is staying with the retire nurse to her Daphne's mother on the wild coast of Cornwall. This tale drips of gothic romantic imagery, but often times the writing is a bit confusing (even to a gothic suspense lover like myself). If you can wade through the sometimes convoluted and wordy sentences it is an entertaining tale. The mystery is a classic formula, a secretive and powerful family that the villagers feel will get away with the murder of the beautiful town girl making good by marrying the Lord. A limited number of people as suspects within the house provide some twists and turns.

The character of miss du Maurier as an imaginative, slightly headstrong and lovely young lady who discovers the dead body and takes on the pleas of the grieving mother to find out who killed Victoria is convincingly portrayed. I must say I liked...

Read the complete review here:

http://mysterysuspence.blogspot.com/2010/04/review-murder-on-cliffs-by-joanna.ht...… (mer)