By Joni BoydSaturday 23 Nov 2024Hope Book ClubBooksReading Time: 3 minutes
The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone is a feel-good, cosy murder mystery (yep, it’s a thing!).
Key points
- The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone is a feel-good, cosy murder mystery (yep, it’s a thing!).
- Authors Gareth and Louise Ward are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books.
- If you’re looking for an intellectual thriller, The Bookshop Detectives probably isn’t for you.
It comes with a language warning (lots of swears in this one) but perfect for a good laugh and a little bit of intrigue, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.
Set in Havelock North, New Zealand and centering around the Sherlock Tomes bookshop, the story follows the adventures of shop owners Garth and Eloise Sherlock, ex cops who just don’t seem to be able to leave the dramas of the crime world behind them.
“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake,” the Prologue reads.
“People warned us that e-readers were taking over.
“People warned us that we’d never compete with Amazon.
“The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders.”
The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone is a feel-good, cosy murder mystery (yep, it’s a thing!).
The Bookshop Detectives is written by Gareth and Louise Ward (yes, very similar names to the protagonists, interestingly) who are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books, with stores in Havelock North and Napier, New Zealand.
Gareth and Louise met at police training college in the UK and are both ex-coppers. Louise has one murder arrest to her name, and Gareth is an award-winning, best-selling author.
Both are obsessed with their rescue dog Stevie.
Sounding familiar?
Authors Gareth and Louise Ward who are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books.
When a mystery parcel arrives at Sherlock Tomes bookshop, Garth and Eloise (and their petrified pooch, Stevie) are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl.
Intrigued by the puzzling, bookish clues, the couple are soon tangled in a web of crime, drugs and floral decapitations, while endeavouring to pull off the international celebrity book launch of the century.
With their beloved shop on the chopping block and the sinister suspect who forced them to run away from Blighty re-emerging from the shadows, have Garth and Eloise Sherlock finally met their Moriarty?
Nestled within the quirky, friendly, kiwi community we’d all love to escape to (well, maybe that’s just me), The Bookshop Detectives keeps you guessing, but gives you a lot to enjoy, along the way.
If you’re looking for an intellectual thriller, The Bookshop Detectives probably isn’t for you.
If you’re looking for an intellectual thriller, with jump scares and border-line trauma inducing plot lines, The Bookshop Detectives probably isn’t for you.
But if, like me, you love a good laugh and a little bit of intrigue, without the trauma? Perhaps you’ve found your next read.
I give The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone 4.5 stars out of 5!
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Book cover image supplied. Photo supplied and used with permission.