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Murder at Christmas by T A Williams #Review #Publication '

BRAND NEW instalment in the page-turning Armstrong & Oscar cozy mystery series, this time in the snowy Italian Alps.    A festive gathering... Private investigator Dan Armstrong, accompanied by his wife and his canine sidekick, Oscar, are spending the days before Christmas in a luxurious Alpine chalet tucked away in a hidden valley. It should be the perfect escape, except the owner is in fear for his life. A house full of secrets... Amid perfect winter wonderland scenery, the more Dan discovers about his host and the other guests, he realises that all is not as it seems. What should be a happy family party is riddled with rancour, mistrust and hatred. A killer in the snow? Then the snow falls – fast and heavy – and within moments, someone is dead. Accident, suicide, or murder? As the snow closes in, Dan has to work out if he's looking for a killer, or whether he and Oscar are barking up the wrong tree. My Thoughts   Dan and Oscar find themselves in a remot...
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The Finding of Martha Lost by Caroline Wallace

    The Finding of Martha Lost is a whimsical fairy tale set in Liverpool Lime Street Station in 1976. The country is in the grip of a heatwave but Martha spends the majority of the story within the confines of the station. Having been abandoned there as a baby, she has been brought up in the Lost Property Office and spent her life surrounded by lost objects. Her adoptive mother is cruel towards her but she has her own secret life down in the basement, surrounded by shelves of books. Martha has a special ability to sense the story behind objects through touch. This is a coming of age story as she unravels the mystery around who she is. Around her, she assembles a mysterious though slightly odd group of characters who are also on their own for various reasons.

    This is a story where the setting plays a major part as Martha has been told by her mother that if she is to ever leave it, it will crumble. It is a place where secrets hide in plain sight. A busy railway station made sense as the backdrop to the story as it is always full of people who are in transit, on their own journeys. It is a place where people pass through, without taking much notice of their surroundings, in contrast to Martha who is stuck there mid journey, looking on. You have to be able to suspend belief to read the book and I don't think that I really managed to do that completely. As the story unfolded, I became a little impatient with the sub plot which revolved around an Australian writer who was on the trail of the lost ashes of Mal Evans, the Beatles roadie.
     
    I would say that the creation of Martha's character is the strongest part of this book. She is naive and innocent having spent most of her life in the station under the thumb of her adopted mother but is an observer and extremely intuitive through her special ability to 'see' the story behind each lost object. I loved her affinity with her books and relentless cheerfulness. However, I found the rest of the plot a little clunky.

In short: wry, quirky out of the ordinary.

Thanks to the publishers, Transworld Publishers who sent me an e-copy of the book via NetGalley.
    
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