Katherine Bolger-Hyde

Finally the renovations have been completed on the Victorian mansion that is Windy Corner. Now literature professor Emily Cavanaugh can organise her first writers' retreat over the Christmas and New Year period.
But death is never far away, but who will be the victim and who the guilty party among all the suspects.
An enjoyable enough cozy mystery though I could not take to the main character. Also some of the guests' characters seemed to be a bit over the top, and therefore obvious.
A NetGalley Book… (más)

Cyanide With Christie is the third book in the Crime With the Classics series. I have had this series on my TBR list for some time, but just never seemed to start it. Once I saw the newest title was an homage to Agatha Christie (my favorite author for 40 years), I finally got with the program and started reading. So glad I did! I really enjoyed this book!

Although the background theme of a relative inheriting a huge house and lots of money from a dead relative is a bit of a trope in cozy mysteries, I like what Katherine Bolger Hyde did with it. Her MC, Emily, inherits a large victorian home from her aunt, plus nearly unlimited funds....so she decides to turn Windy Corner into a writers retreat center. The house has six newly remodeled rooms all centered around a different classic author. Dickens. Christie. Montgomery. Forster. Austen. Bronte. Dostoevsky.

I wish Windy Corner was real! I would definitely go write there! And I would ask for the Christie room, of course!

I loved how the plot set up like a Christie novel. A group of people invited to a stately manor. Bad weather comes in to trap them there. An uninvited guest...or a surprise of some sort...reveals that one guest is hated by all the others. Hated guest dies horribly. Everyone is a suspect. Cool twisty ending nobody sees coming. Neat ending for everyone else involved. Loved it! Nice Christiesque feel with a modern edge.

I have the other two books in this series -- Arsenic With Austen and Bloodstains with Bronte -- on my TBR shelf. I'm definitely going to backtrack a bit and start with book one. I'm going to read this series through from the start. It isn't necessary to read the books in order....I jumped in at #3 and was able to figure things out...but I'd like to get all the character and background development from books one and two, then re-read this third book.

All in all, a well-written and enjoyable mystery! I'm definitely going to be reading more by this author. I like her writing style and her characters.

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Severn House via Netgalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**… (más)