I had never read Brenda Joyce before and I was enthused about reviewing Deadly Desire. The Francesca Cahill series has gotten fairly good reviews here, Joyce has her fans and some of her other books have been very well received. So it came as a complete shock to me how much I loathed this book….
Brenda Joyce’s latest Francesca Cahill installment purports to be a historical mystery, but “historical soap opera” may be just as apt a description. There were so many characters to keep track of in this turn of the century whodunit, all involved in their own little (and not so little) subplots, that I often felt like…
It’s a good thing Brenda Joyce keeps telling us just how smart heroine Francesca Cahill is, because otherwise the reader might have good cause to wonder. <!– var browName = navigator.appName; var SiteID = 1; var ZoneID = 4; var browDateTime = (new Date()).getTime(); if (browName=='Netscape') { document.write('‘); document.write(”); } if (browName!=’Netscape’) { document.write(‘‘); document.write(”);…
In the first book of the Braceridge series, the victim died by spontaneously combusting. It’s a method that immediately piqued the reader’s interest, which was further held by a well-written plot. In this, the fourth in the series, the murder method isn’t nearly as intriguing and sadly, neither is the plot. The time is 1766…
Barbara Hambly’s first mystery set in antebellum New Orleans, A Free Man of Color, has a prominent place on my keeper shelf. Though I haven’t read the intervening several books in the series I was eager to review the latest installment, Die Upon a Kiss. Benjamin January is an accomplished physician and a virtuoso musician….
Tom Brokaw’s bestseller The Greatest Generation made a lot of people nostalgic for the WWII era. Certainly, Brokaw’s book didn’t sugar-coat things, but people’s memories do. The problem with nostalgia is that we only tend to dwell on the heroic, adventurous aspects of a time, and forget about the day-to-day struggles that were going on…
Many books (some of them mysteries) are set in Elizabethan England but there aren’t any others that can claim to have Queen Elizabeth herself doing the investigating. What amazed me in Karen Harper’s first historical mystery, The Poyson Garden and this one, is that Elizabeth’s sleuthing actually makes sense. She has formed a Privy Plot…
I was almost disappointed that I enjoyed this book so much because it means that I have yet another series to follow! This is the fourth book featuring Elizabethan spy Ursula Blanchard as the heroine, but not having read the first three books did not present a problem for me, other than making me want…
B.D. Joyce is the pseudonym adopted by Brenda Joyce for her new series of historical mysteries set in turn of the century New York City. Such a pseudonym might invite comparisons to Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb and the similarities go beyond the name. Deadly Love sets up Francesca Cahill, a wealthy reformer, and Rick Bragg, New…
Mysteries provide a pleasant change of pace for me, and this one was refreshing in setting, plot and characterizations. The book has enough medieval flavor to demonstrate the author’s research, but does not overwhelm the story. Hugh Corbaille was orphaned at the age of seven and taken in by the Sheriff of Lincoln, Ralf Corbaille,…