I’m not sure if there is a particular genre name for light-hearted crime fiction. Until I find out, I’ll call the likes of books by Richard Osman, Susan Juby, Ron Base, Prudence Emery, Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti: crime fiction (with a chuckle). Novels by these authors with their amateur sleuths, remind me somewhat of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Usually, the Christie novels, as well as those of P.D. James, were set in a particular setting such as a small village, a school, a theatre, and we got to meet all the characters among whom is the murderer. That way we readers could be sleuths as well.

My favourites of the light-hearted crime novels I’ve read recently? I appreciated Bury the Lead by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti because I knew women wouldn’t be denigrated – or if they were, something would be done about it. (See my review, below.) I liked Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby with its quirky characters from an “outer island” and it’s B.C. locale. (Susan has new book out with the same protagonist, Helen Thorpe, see below.) I found the gossipy nature with reference to famous people the most fun aspect of Ron Base’s and Prudence Emery’s Death at the Savoy. (They have a third book out in their Priscilla Tempest Mystery series, see below.)

Bury the Lead: A Quill & Packet Mystery (House of Anansi Press, 2024) is hot off the press with a March 5th publication date. It’s a novel smartly done by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti. Kate is a bestselling author of three novels and works with psychotherapy and life coaching clients in Toronto. Elizabeth Renzetti also lives in Toronto and is a bestselling author and journalist. I very much appreciated her columns in The Globe and Mail where she also worked for the newspaper as a reporter and editor. Elizabeth won the Landsberg Award in 2020 for her reporting on gender equality.

Their character, Cat Conway, is relatable, likeable, and determined to do a good job at the Quill & Packet as reporter. She’s left her high-profile career to live and work in Port Ellis, a fictional town on a lake, where she spent childhood holidays. Her salary as a small town reporter isn’t so great so she does some part time work as a bartender at Second Act where she also lives in an apartment above the restaurant. I like the sound of the drink Cat had there: “the Rosalind, a luscious concoction of elderflower, Prosecco, lavender syrup, and gin.”

The title, Bury the Lead, is clever as it relates to journalism (although there it would be spelled “lede”) and to the lead character played by actor Eliot Fraser in Inherit the Wind at the local theatre. He’s the one who ends up dead on opening night. The suspects include an actor whose career he ruined, an ex-wife he betrayed, women he abused, and even a baker he wronged. As Cat interviews people connected to the murder victim (for the newspaper, not as a detective) and unravels some small town secrets, she has her life threatened and her car and apartment vandalized.

As Joanna Schneller, a columnist with The Globe and Mail, says about authors Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti: “They get the worlds of theatre and journalism exactly right, the stubborn talents and eggshell egos.”

The authors pay tribute to other female amateur and professional sleuths by naming them: Jessica Fletcher and Jane Tennison. Remember them from TV shows of the past?

I appreciate the book’s size, a bit wider than a traditional paperback and the type size is just right. It’s the first in a series of Quill & Packet Mysteries. The next will be Widows and Orphans.

If you happen to live in or near Victoria there will be a Mysterious Book Launch with Nanaimo’s own Susan Juby as well as Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti.

Tuesday March 19th, 2024 @ 7:00P M – 9:00 PM
Munro’s Books, 1108 Government Street
Two mysteries will be celebrated: A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby, and Bury the Lead, by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzettii.
The event is free to attend.

Here’s what’s been said about A Meditation on Murder: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2024): “Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order—and solve the murders of her fellow content creators—in this hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby.”

Susan Juby, who is a creative writing professor at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, began her own mystery series featuring her character Helen Thorpe who is a Buddhist butler-detective with Mindful of Murder: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2022). The novel is set at the Yatra Institute, a fictional retreat centre on a British Columbia Gulf Island. Susan was inspired by a visit to Hollyhock Retreat Centre which is on Cortes Island. It was fun to hear Susan read from her manuscript at a Vancouver Island Regional Library event before the first in her mystery series was published.

Another mystery series or crime fiction (with a chuckle) is being written by Nanaimo-born Prudence Emery and novelist Ron Base.

Death at the Savoy: A Priscilla Tempest Mystery (Douglas & McIntyre, 2022) was the first in a mystery series by Ron Base and Prudence Emery. Ron Base is a former newspaper and magazine journalist who has written twenty novels. He divides his time between Milton, Ontario and Fort Myers, Florida. Prudence Emery is the author of Nanaimo Girl (Cormorant Books, 2020) who worked as the press and public relations officer at the Savoy Hotel in London, England from 1968 to 1973. Pru now lives in Victoria, B.C.

Death at the Savoy is rather like an Agatha Christie novel as its protagonist, Priscilla (never Prissy) Tempest is the accidental sleuth, as well, in this case, a suspect, finding herself, quite often, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I enjoyed Death at the Savoy not so much for a chasing of clues to find a killer but because I appreciated its lightness while wondering who among the rich, famous and aristocratic would turn up next at the Savoy. I’m thinking Ron Base and Prudence Emery would have had great fun cooking up this mystery.

The years spent working at the Savoy Hotel are described by Prudence as “the champagne-filled years” which is also the case for the young heroine of Death at the Savoy: Priscilla Tempest. Priscilla, a Canadian, works at the Savoy Press Office, Room 205, or simply, 205. Her assistant is Susie Gore-Langton whose aristocratic family’s luck “had more or less run out.”

The Savoy sounds grand in reality as well as in the fictional version created by Ron and Prudence. At the fictional hotel, in 1968 with London “in full swing,” there are two murders and a Scotland Yard Inspector, Robert “Charger” Lightfoot, is called in to investigate. A general manager, Clive Banville, and other hotel employees may not be all that they pretend to be, and there are those famous guests. You can read the rest of my review here.

Ron Base and Prudence Emery are a prolific team. They already have two more books in the series: Scandal at the Savoy, A PriscillaTempest Mystery, Book 2 (Douglas & McIntyre, 2023) and the latest: Princess of the Savoy: A Priscilla Tempest Mystery, Book 3 (Douglas & McIntyre, 2024). The latest is on my to-be-read shelf right now and I expect I’ll be writing a blog about it as well.