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Murder Is for Keeps: A Penny Brannigan…
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Murder Is for Keeps: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (edición 2017)

por Elizabeth J. Duncan (Autor)

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334727,058 (3.58)2
"Local artist and amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan has been spending her summer painting the exterior and views of the once-lovely Gwrych Castle, now in a heartbreaking state of disrepair. A privately owned castellated country house of jaw dropping scale, the gorgeous house located just outside of Penny's picturesque Welsh town has been sadly neglected for decades. Penny is thrilled when she hears local Mark Baker is leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to restore the castle grounds and formal gardens to their former grandeur. But there are always disagreements about how everything should be done, and it's not long before they turn deadly. Penny is horrified to discover the body of an overbearing volunteer who had opposed Mark at every turn. Convinced that Mark is innocent, Penny enlists the help of keen gardener Gareth Davies, recently retired from the North Wales Police Service. She asks that he join the volunteer brigade, so Gareth dons a hi-vis jacket, picks up a spade and picks up a few clues, too. Asked to examine watercolor paintings of the estate gardens from the 1920s, Penny is surprised to find a few clues of her own. Could the 90-year-old paintings really hold the keys to a present-day murder? Murder is for Keeps is the latest book in this charming traditional mystery series from Elizabeth J. Duncan"--… (más)
Miembro:mmignano11
Título:Murder Is for Keeps: A Penny Brannigan Mystery
Autores:Elizabeth J. Duncan (Autor)
Información:Minotaur Books (2017), 272 pages
Colecciones:Aquired 2017
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Murder is for Keeps por Elizabeth J. Duncan

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Mostrando 4 de 4
Between 3 and 4 stars. Read through this one quick as this series is always a good read and gets me motivated to read more books. I missed this one when it came out, and after reading the latest book in the series, I backtracked to this one.

The main plot, the death of John Hardwick, felt like it stewed in the background until the AHA moment came. I also liked the side plot of the 90 year old cold case of the skeleton unearthed on the property. And I enjoyed it but it seemed a bit...off. Maybe because Garth is newly retired, so Penny wasn't exactly in the thick of things. Maybe because the characters seem to be growing and progressing. But it all took a backseat to Penny's cold dark heart and her seeming indifference to Gareth finally giving up on her and taking off to be with a woman he'd just met. While it could be perceived as making Penny a bit unlikable, I think it uncovers how little Penny has been fleshed out as a character. She has stagnated, but the other characters haven't. Hmm.

And am I the only one who thinks of Mrs Lloyd as Hyacinth from Keeping Up Appearances? And Florence as Hyacinth's neighbor Cynthia? Can never shake that image.

Anyway, an enjoyable book but one that highlighted the shortcomings of the series. And frankly Gareth, I think you're better off. ( )
  MystereityReviews | Oct 8, 2021 |
This was a light and easy read...

The main character (see I don't even remember her name) is an artist. Her male friend is the former CID of the town.

They are volunteering together in the ruins of the local Castle Keeps when she discovers the body of a well known garden expert & renovator. He was working there in order to get to know his special needs estranged son.

His son makes friends w/ the protagonist & the former CID, then he disappears....

Meanwhile there comes the question: "What happened to the marble staircase?" The staircase was the focal point of the castle, w/ 55 steps, 2 landings, & a red carpet ending at a stained glass window.

It took me a while to get into the book, because it is a semi-cozy, but when I did, I found it enjoyable.

There isn't gratuitous violence, but there is a back story about the castle and its destruction by "new age travelers" and the nifty solution of the staircase ( )
  Auntie-Nanuuq | Jun 7, 2017 |
This is, unfortunately, in in the "against" column for cozy mysteries. It wasn't horrible. But for a three-hundred-page cozy, it was one heck of a slog, and seemed to take me forever.

One of the most important things in a cozy is the cast of characters, and … the characters in this book did nothing for me. I actually found most of them mildly off-putting. Main character Penny was strangely amorphous, never leaving any kind of strong impression on me at all. She's an artist, of enough impact that when she offers a set of paintings for a fund-raising auction they are happily accepted, and they set off a bidding war – but that's not what she does. (One highlight I made: "My paintings will never do it justice. It’s got something that’s impossible to capture." Not if you're a decent artist, it doesn't.) Her income apparently derives from a spa of sorts she and a friend own and operate – though it sounds more like simply a hair and nail salon than a spa, unless I wasn't paying enough attention (absolutely possible – there was much skimming involved in finishing this book). (This could have been revealed better, for someone who hasn't read – and won't read – the preceding seven books: it took some figuring to realize her position – I had assumed she painted for a living. It's a challenge, providing exposition in a series that will orientate the newbie while not boring the regular reader – and the author failed, I think.) The fact that at one point Penny needs to literally count on her fingers to figure out a date just made me sad.

And then, of course, as another sideline Penny investigates mysteries, for which her partner at one point gives her the sort of talking-to I would expect from a mother to a naughty child, not one middle-aged business partner to another, ticking her off for taking time away from the business to investigate a murder. And yet a little while later she had a complete reversal, and not only encouraged Penny to take a day off to go investigate but volunteers to go with her.

Her one-time (almost?) lover Gareth, now a retired DCI who is having trouble entirely letting go of the job, is also having trouble adjusting to the friendzone Penny has put him in. It was extraordinarily awkward to read about these two people who love spending time with each other, do all sorts of things together, rely on each other in every way, and then kind of clumsily fumble through do-I-kiss-you-or-what-I'll-just-leave-now moments. This might be a good one for my "Just TALK TO EACH OTHER" shelf. They do, talk that is, a little – but it's all … well, stupid. My notes on the Kindle featured such things as "A MAN HAS NEEDS, PENNY"… And then, a few pages later, "NEEDS, I TELL YOU." All caps and everything. When I take the trouble to go all caps and put in the comma on a Kindle note, you know I'm serious. ("'Still, I thought he was devoted to me, and I didn’t really expect this.'" My God, woman.)

Det. Inspector Bethan Morgan, who took Gareth's job when he retired, was another yo-yo character. She absolutely did not want Gareth's help with the investigation, nor Penny's – despite the fact that the latter found the body … until she absolutely did want their help, and then she all but turned the case over to them. It was completely unconvincing.

I felt that the writing was strangely uncertain for something that is the eighth book in a series; it seemed to me like some sections were feeling their way toward where they needed to go. Sentences were badly constructed, commas popped up where they shouldn't and failed to appear where they should, and – oh, look, there's Captain Obvious. "…A rusty red blur emerged from the dense woodland behind the castle. It moved with a swift, agile gait, carrying its bushy whitetipped tail horizontal to the ground, as it headed in the direction of the stable yard. A fox, she thought with delight." And here I thought it might be a wildebeest. That's actually kind of typical. The author doesn't seem to trust her readers much, and I found it annoying to be taken by the hand and led through situations baby step by baby step. I don't know if this is an issue of the uncertainty I mentioned, or an inability to write decent exposition, or that desire to make absolutely, completely, and utterly sure that the picture in the reader's head is exactly the same as the picture in the author's. Maybe it's all of the above. It doesn't make for a fun read.

Or maybe it's just sloppy writing. Like this: "… passed round sandwiches, cheese, and biscuits from the cooler.
'Have we got any biscuits?' 'We do,' said Penny, holding out a packet." That would be those things that were just passed around with the sandwiches and cheese. Oh, and "'I’d hate for this paint to fall into the wrong hands.' 'No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,' said Penny" … Um. That doesn't mean what you meant it to mean.

When one young man appears on the scene, his introduction is … well, not to put too fine a point on it, it's a failure. The initial description is perfectly ordinary. And then suddenly in the midst of talking to our heroes he shuts down and demonstrates behavior that makes it obvious that he is mentally and/or emotionally handicapped – but it was so out of the blue that I was completely knocked out of the story. It's later made clear that this character's challenges are obvious to anyone who meets him, but the only indicator the reader is given is that he stumbles over a long-ish word in one of the first bits of dialogue he's given.

As soon as I read that Gareth was being sent in to clean the debris out of a fireplace in the mansion where he's volunteering, I had a horrible feeling that some priceless piece of evidence would be found stuffed up the chimney. And so it was. That's much the way the whole mystery is solved – through "why, look what I have found!" and coincidence, and a fourth-hand account of something that happened (*counts on fingers*) ninety years ago, of which they have no real proof.

The setting is something else that should be very strong in a cozy – I mean, these things are pretty much the point in this subgenre, aren't they? But apart from names like "Eirlys" and "Bethan" and "Gwrych", and a smattering of Welsh … this could be picked up and set down in any English country village without disturbing a stick or stone of the story. Which is not, of course, to say that I wanted everyone's speech written out to reflect the dialect, or for anyone to burst into Welsh more often than happened – but there had to be a reason the series was set in Wales, no? I'd have liked to have seen it.

Something that could be considered very much a cozy mystery "thing" – and which became really tiresome before long – was the fact that just about every passage – not every chapter, every passage – seemed to begin with, end with, or otherwise feature food. I may not know much about these characters, but I sure know what they ate.

Finally, I was just deeply annoyed by what was a clever pun the first time I saw it, over five years ago, but … really, "Game of Thorns" has been done.

No – one more thing. I wonder what the connection is between Elizabeth J. Duncan and Jeanne Dams, author of the Dorothy Martin mysteries – because Dorothy and her husband Gareth make a really odd and rather pointless-seeming cameo appearance in this book. It was weird.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. ( )
  Stewartry | May 24, 2017 |
Murder is for Keeps by Elizabeth J. Duncan is the eighth book in A Penny Brannigan Mystery series. Penny Brannigan is sketching at Gwrych Castle in Llanelen, North Wales. She is working on a series of painting for an upcoming auction to raise funds to help restore Gwrych Castle and the grounds. Penny is preparing to leave for the day when she notices a flash of red. Penny follows the trail into the old kennels where she finds a body. The victim turns out to be John Hardwick, a landscape architect, who was volunteering at the castle. The next day Penny is at The Llanelen Spa that she co-owns with Victoria Hopkirk, when she is approached by Christina Hardwick, John’s wife. Christina has heard of Penny’s reputation as an amateur sleuth and would like to hire Penny to investigate John’s death. Penny with the help of recently retired, Gareth Davies (former Detective Chief Inspector) starts asking questions. Gareth can provide some background details on the castle. His grandmother, Annie worked at the castle as a seamstress, and he has a box of photos and a beautiful needlepoint. When they return to the castle they meet Lane Hardwick, the victim’s son. Not long after speaking with Lane, he disappears. Then another body is found in the gardens at Gwrych Castle. This victim has been dead for over ninety years. Penny discovers that the castle has a colorful history and looking into the past will help solve the mystery of John’s death. Join Penny on her latest sleuthing adventure in Murder is For Keeps.

I thought Murder is for Keeps to be nicely written. It has a good pace and can be finished in a couple of hours. The location is unique, and I appreciated the pleasing descriptions of the area. I do wish the author would provide a pronunciation guide (for people’s names and locations). Murder is for Keeps may be the eighth book in the series, but it can be read alone. The author provides the necessary background details on Penny. I like the character of Penny Brannigan and her friends. I give Murder is for Keeps 3.5 out of 5 stars. The various mystery components are interesting, and I like how the author tied them together. I just wish, though, that the identity of the killer had not been so transparent (nor the location of the missing marble staircase). Murder is for Keeps is a cozy mystery that I believe many readers will enjoy. It has just the right blend of mystery and cozy (with a subtle romance element). ( )
  Kris_Anderson | Apr 28, 2017 |
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"Local artist and amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan has been spending her summer painting the exterior and views of the once-lovely Gwrych Castle, now in a heartbreaking state of disrepair. A privately owned castellated country house of jaw dropping scale, the gorgeous house located just outside of Penny's picturesque Welsh town has been sadly neglected for decades. Penny is thrilled when she hears local Mark Baker is leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to restore the castle grounds and formal gardens to their former grandeur. But there are always disagreements about how everything should be done, and it's not long before they turn deadly. Penny is horrified to discover the body of an overbearing volunteer who had opposed Mark at every turn. Convinced that Mark is innocent, Penny enlists the help of keen gardener Gareth Davies, recently retired from the North Wales Police Service. She asks that he join the volunteer brigade, so Gareth dons a hi-vis jacket, picks up a spade and picks up a few clues, too. Asked to examine watercolor paintings of the estate gardens from the 1920s, Penny is surprised to find a few clues of her own. Could the 90-year-old paintings really hold the keys to a present-day murder? Murder is for Keeps is the latest book in this charming traditional mystery series from Elizabeth J. Duncan"--

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