Death Remembered by K.E. Coburn

Title: Death Remembered (A Sleuthing Club Mystery #1)

Author: K.E. Coburn

Published on: 16th July 2020

Genre: Cozy Mystery (Historical)

Charity Nicholls is bored with her quaint life in a tiny English village where nothing ever happens. She wants to move to London and take up a secretarial job but her parents are against it. Her father is the vicar and her mother helps him with the parish duties. Charity’s father receives a poisoned-pen letter and things change for the Nicholls. Charity is a fan of crime fiction and she wants to try her hand at amateur sleuthing. She has the mystery letter as a clue, so off she goes, in search of the one who sent her father a poisoned-pen letter.

Soon, Charity realizes her father wasn’t the only one to receive a letter. Moreover, people start dying – killed by the blackmailer. Will Charity be able to catch the murderer before it is too late?

Death Remembered is the first book in a brand new cozy mystery series – A Sleuthing Club. If you like reading historical cozy mysteries, you might want to give this book a try.

First things first, Death Remembered didn’t have the feel of a cozy debut. Let me explain: When it comes to the debut/first book in a series, preference is usually to given to character introduction and the setting. But, with Death Remembered, it felt like I was somewhere in the middle of the series. Of course, this is a good thing. Jumping directly into the mystery with just the right amount of preference given to character background and setting make the story interesting.

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Charity, our main character and amateur sleuth, isn’t someone I liked a lot as the story began. She is annoying at times – stubborn, rather. She jumps to conclusions before giving it a thought. She’s smitten with Henry Taylor but as a reader, we are given certain clues that screams ‘not a good fella’. Love’s blind, eh?

As the story ends, I really liked Charity. She put on her big girl face and took a firm decision or two. I am looking forward to seeing what’s next for Charity in the love and career department. Enough about Charity, let’s talk about Henry. Henry works in the War office in London and is in the village to get rid of his late mother’s things and sell the house. He agrees to help Charity in sleuthing. Tipps, a local bobby and Charity’s childhood friend, is around too. The trio form an impromptu sleuthing group and go snooping around in the dark.

The mystery behind the murder was well hidden until the end. Red Herrings are plenty and sure to take you in a wrong direction. I could not identify the murderer until the end. They seemed so innocent it was hard to believe they could be behind the nasty letters and ghastly crimes. The only niggle I had was, the story felt a little dragged at times.

Death Remembered by K.E. Coburn is an interesting and engrossing historical cozy mystery. A really good debut to the series and I cannot wait to read the next book!

Many thanks to Rachel for the blog tour invite.