"The Case of the Hidden Flame" by Alison Golden

Detective Inspector David Graham has just arrived on Jersey in the English Channel, where he’s been appointed to lead the police force. He’s barely put his luggage down in his hotel room when a murder is reported. The body of a  retired oncologist who’s been living at the hotel has been buried on the beach, found by the man who was getting ready to propose to her.  

The medical examiner suspects murder, although the body bear so no signs of violence. He determines that the cause of death was asphyxiation, brought on by a heart arrythmia. But she’d been perfectly healthy, and so he suspects poison.

 

That’s not the only mystery; the time of death is uncertain. It’s likely that she was poisoned with a glass of wine brought with her lunch and left outside her door, except the glass is missing. Graham and his team have their work cut out for them.

 

Suspects abound, too, including the almost fiancée, a wife who suspects her husband has been having affair with the retired doctor, a man whose son died from cancer while under the doctor’s care, and more.

 

Alison Golden

The Case of the Hidden Flame is the second in the DI David Graham series by Alison Golden, and it’s a charming (and relatively short) mystery lacking any gory detail (“ a little foam around the mouth” is as gory as it gets).

 

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex. Golden also includes recipes mentioned in the books at the end of the Anabelle Dixon stories. Raised in Bedfordshire, England, Golden now lives in the San Francisco area. 

 

The Case of the Hidden Flame is an easy-reading story perfect for vacations. If I lived near a beach, I would have read it while sitting in my beach chair under a large umbrella, while keeping an eye out for anyone who might want to slip something in my drink.

 

Related:

 

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

 

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

 

Grave in the Garage by Alison Golden.

 

Two Annabelle Dixon Mysteries by Alison Golden.

 

Killer at the Cult by Alison Golden.

 

The Case of the Missing Letter by Alison Golden.

"Killer at the Cult" by Alison Golden

The Rev. Annabelle Dixon, vicar at the church in Upton St. Mary in Cornwall, manages to get herself involved in more criminal investigations than might be expected for a member of the Anglican clergy. She finds herself in the right place at the right time, or perhaps it’s more of a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.

A group – some in the village call it a cult – has moved into one of the outlying properties. It calls itself the Brotherhood of St. Petrie (puzzled, Annabelle wonders out loud if he could be a minor saint). Members of the small group make various things or provide services like blacksmithing, and they do seem relatively harmless. Their leader is charming and rather charismatic, as Annabelle finds when she visits. 

One visit becomes rather extended; she’s invited to participate in something that resembles a cross between howling at the moon and a frolic in the forest. It’s odd behavior but appears rather harmless fun. When she’s had enough, Annabelle leaves to walk to her car – and stumbles over the body of the group’s leader. He’s been shot with a bolt gun.

Detective Inspector Mike Nicholls would usually be the officer in charge, but he’s at a training session. DI Nicholls is also Annabelle’s romantic interest, but she’s wondering if the relationship is going anywhere; at best, she thinks, it’s stalled. The officer in charge is rather pompous and lights almost immediately upon a suspect. And the assisting officer is a woman who has a definite love interest in DI Nicholls, and she has little if any use for Annabelle.

Alison Golden

What Annabelle comes to learn is that almost every member of the group had a possible motive for killing their leader. And he turns out not to be the kind, charming man everyone thinks he is.

Killer at the Cult by Alison Golden is the latest installment in the Annabelle Dixon series. Officially, it’s classified as a “cozy” mystery, which means the violence is limited and generally off-stage and there’s little or no graphic content (in other words, you’d recommend it to your mother or grandmother without question). 

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Golden also includes recipes mentioned in the books at the end of the Anabelle Dixon stories. Raised in Bedfordshire, England, Golden now lives in the San Francisco area. 

The Annabelle Dixon mysteries are light, fun reads, and Killer at the Cult faithfully follows its predecessors. Aside from identifying the murderer, the additional question the story asks is, will DI Nicholls do something and reignite the romance with the good reverend?

Related:

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Grave in the Garage by Alison Golden.

Two Annabelle Dixon Mysteries by Alison Golden.

The Case of the Missing Letter by Alison Golden.

"The Case of the Missing Letter" by Alison Golden

Detective Inspector David Graham has much to be proud of with his team. As the story in the newspaper reports, since his arrival on the island of Jersey, crime has dropped 16 percent and solved cases now constitute half of the statistics. And when a policeman is feeling proud of his and his team’s accomplishments, the reader knows trouble lies ahead.

A lot of trouble.

First, Graham is called to the island’s cultural museum. It appears that a burglary went very, very wrong. The night guard is found dead next to the museum’s prize possession, an 18^th century desk made by a master carpenter, one of only three in the world. It appears that the guard interrupted a burglar, but the man had a heart condition and actually died of a heart attack.

The desk was damaged when the guard fell, and a local furniture maker and repairman is capably restoring it. Then he’s found with his head bashed in. It’s that desk again. And if a burglary-gone-wrong and a murder weren’t enough, someone is out to kill the new librarian in town.

Alison Golden

In The Case of the Missing Letter by Alison Golden, DI Graham and his team suddenly have their hands full. What the reader knows, if the police team doesn’t, is that two people are after a letter believed hidden in the desk, one that could smear a well-known family and upend a parliamentary election race. 

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex. Golden also includes recipes mentioned in the books at the end of the Anabelle Dixon stories. Raised in Bedfordshire, England, Golden now lives in the San Francisco area. 

The Case of the Missing Letter is fast-moving, with an intriguing plot and more villains running around than you can shake a fist at. But Graham and his team will persist, and they will catch more than one guilty party. 

Related:

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Grave in the Garage by Alison Golden.

Two Annabelle Dixon Mysteries by Alison Golden.

2 Annabelle Dixon Mysteries by Alison Golden

The Rev. Annabelle Dixon of the village of Upton St. Mary in Cornwall has a particular knack or gift. Wherever she goes, or wherever she happens to be, murder and crime rear their heads. And he position as reverend allows her access to places and minds that would otherwise be closed. People says things to a vicar they might not say to police.

Author Alison Golden has six books in the Annabelle Dixon cozy mystery series. Body the Woods is the third in the series, and Annabelle continues to find herself at odds with Detective Inspector Mike Nicholls, who has to deal with Annabelle’s way of ferreting out information from people that he and police officers can only marvel out. Not that she’s right all the time, mind you, but right often enough to make a difference in murder cases.

A young boy trips in the woods near Upton St. Mary, and what he trips over is a partially emerged skeleton, buried at least 20 years before. The body turns out to be a young woman who had gone missing and was presumed to have run off from both her sister and her boyfriend. The Rev. Annabelle is naturally nosy, and always intrigued, and she talks to people who knew the young woman.

The vicar comes across a number of unrelated mysteries in the process. Why has her housekeeper suddenly become afraid of everything? Why is Inspector Nicholls constantly in a bad mood? And why is the visiting forensic specialist from London so sad?

In Horror in the Highlands, the fifth in the series, Annabelle is off to the “northernmost islands of Scotland” to visit her brother Roger and her niece Bonnie. Roger is a widower and IT consultant, operating from this quiet, small island where he’s raising his daughter. Annabelle’s visit includes a short stint as temporary vicar of the local church, while the permanent vicar is on holiday. She’s thrilled to see her family, but, well, this is Annabelle, and things are going to happen. 

A young friend of Bonnie brings a box of valuable jewelry to Annabelle for safekeeping. The box was found under a loose floorboard in an abandoned house. Then someone breaks into the church safe and steals the box. And then the body of the owner of the local pub is found murdered on the beach. The island is so small that it doesn’t even have a police officer, which allows Annabelle to investigate, under Inspector Mike Nicholls lands in a helicopter. If you haven’t read Grave in the Garage, the fourth in the series, you wouldn’t know that something has fundamentally changed in the relationship between the vicar and the policeman. They’re now holding hands and blushing. A lot.

Alison Golden

It may be a small island that she’s visiting, but it has more crime that you can shake a stick at. And Anabelle will find herself in the thick of all of it.

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex. Golden also includes recipes mentioned in the books at the end of the Anabelle Dixon stories.

Body in the Woods is a solid mystery, a bit more serious than its predecessors. Horror in the Highlands comes to its conclusion a bit abruptly, but it’s still a fun story.

Related:

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Grave in the Garage by Alison Golden.

Photo of St. Clement, Truro, Cornwall, by Adverse Camber via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Grave in the Garage” by Alison Golden

The Rev. Annabelle Dixon, vicar of the church in the village of Upton St. Mary, loves her Mini Cooper. When she’s not listening to the new and excellent organist practicing at the church, she likes nothing better than to tool around the countryside, visiting parishioners, and driving her little car.

Except today, the Mini Cooper dies on her. So, she goes tromping back up the road, takes a shortcut through farmers’ fields (dealing with a few obstinate cows along the way), and finally arrives at Mildred’s Garage. But Mildred and her employees Ted and Aziz are nowhere to be found. Until Annabelle finds a body in the service bay, under a car. It’s a very dead Mildred. 

Annabelle unexpectedly finds Inspector Mike Nicholls in the pub across the street. He knows the reverend well; he also knows her penchant for getting involved in murder investigations. He’s also discovering that he’s attracted to Annabelle, and while she’s not ready to admit it, she’s attracted to him as well. It’s a potent combination of murder and romance.

Alison Golden

The assistants, Ted and Aziz, remain missing. Forty-year-old Ted mains he life like clockwork – work, pub, home. But he’s a no-show at the pub, and he can’t be found. Teenager Aziz is normally a various serious young man, and his family wants to believe that he’s just off with friends, or something. There’s an ongoing mystery that may or may not be related to the murder – the men of the village keep disappearing at night, and they’re spending a lot less money at the pub.

Grave in the Garage by mystery writer Alison Golden is part of the ongoing Annabelle Dixon series. It falls squarely in the cozy mystery sub-genre. The books in the series also include a considerable element of light humor involving Annabelle, Nicholls, and Annabelle’s housekeeper Phillippa, a wannabe matchmaker.

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex.

Grave in the Garage is an entertaining story, with a nice overlay of the developing relationship between Annabelle and the police inspector.

Related:

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

“Hunted” and “Chopped” by Alison Golden

Diana Hunter is something of a brain. Entering college at 16, she’s less interested in dating and far more interested in computers and science. Her mother works at a hospital and her father is a police detective for the Vancouver Police Department. Her father tends to be over-protective of his daughter. 

In Hunted, the prequel for the Diana Hunter suspense series by Alison Golden, Diane’s life turns upside down in a matter of a few months. Her mother commits suicide at work; at least, that’s what the police investigation determines. There’s even a suicide note. Her father gradually comes to understand that this was no suicide, and he and a colleague quietly begin to investigate on their own. Soon they are booth killed in a shootout; the assailants are unknown. This story provides the background for what happens in the next several books in the series – and why Diana became involved in law enforcement.

Chopped is three stories down the road from Hunted. Several years have passed; Diana has moved from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to the Vancouver Police Department, where she works as a consultant. She’s partnered with detective Peter Hopkinson, and despite her longstanding commitment to no romantic involvement with colleagues, she’s finding herself increasingly attracted.

Alison Golden

Hunter and Hopkinson are called to a murder scene. A headless dead body has been found and a surgical mask is in the victim’s pocket. The missing head is not a sign, but the surgical mask certainly is. Hunter’s old nemesis the Surgeon has resurfaced, and it looks like he’s up to old tricks, including targeting of Hunter herself. The crime has links into international terrorism and a possible assassination plot. Hunter figures the only way to smoke out the Surgeon is to use herself as bait. It works.

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex.

Things happen in the Diana Hunter series – and fast. The stories are action-packed, sometimes so action-packed that close reading is required to keep track of everything. But they’re highly entertaining suspense stories, with a very self-sufficient woman detective at the center.

Related:

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden

Alison Golden is one prolific mystery writer, with three series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as there may be a murder or two, but the violence is minimal and whatever romantic interest there is will not involve graphic sex.

In the case of Golden’s two cozy detectives, there is also a strong undercurrent of humor.

Death at the Café is a kind of prequel to the Rev. Annabelle series. It’s set in London; the recently ordained Annabelle is working at a church in the East End. While she’s enjoying it and seeing good things happen, her vicar’s soul yearns for the country village life. She also likes cake, of any type or variety.

She goes to meet an old childhood friend, Sister Mary, a nun now serving in Africa who’s in London to help raise money for her mission. As it turns out, the sister has an appointment to meet with the niece of a potential benefactor the hour before she meets Annabelle. As the niece approaches the nun’s table, she collapses. She’s dead, and it isn’t by natural causes. Annabelle will work overtime to help her friend, and they encounter another murder, stolen jewels, and good old-fashioned greed. 

In Murder at the Mansion, the Rev. Annabelle is now the vicar in the Cornwall village of Upton St. Mary, driving her blue Mini Cooper around the countryside. She has a housekeeper, Philippa, who knows the new vicar likes a good cake or two but suspects she’s quietly stealing Philippa’s culinary delights. Annabelle hears rumors that a new resident from London, who’s bought the big mansion near town, is secretly scheming to open a brothel. She decides to check for herself, and while she waits for him to finish his yoga meditation, the man is killed by a crossbow.

The case is investigated by Inspector Mike Nicholls, who, in what is made clear from the outset, is a potential love interest for Annabelle, even if he doesn’t know it yet. She knows it, however. And she’s drawn into the case not solely for the purpose of finding the killer.

Both Annabelle Dixon mysteries include recipes for all the cakes and desserts featured in the stories.

A different detective, Inspector David Graham, is the main character in The Case of the Screaming Beauty. Amelia and Cliff Swansbourne operate The Lavender, a beautiful, old, and well-maintained hotel, written up in all the right travel magazines. A guest, a young and rather beautiful woman from London, is found murdered in her room, and potential suspects abound.

As Inspector Graham pursues the case, it becomes anything but straightforward. And the key to finding the murdered is wrapped into why the dead woman screamed the night before, long before she was murdered.

Each of the three mysteries is fast-paced, with clues left for the reader to consider. They are exactly what they’re written to be – fun and clean entertainment.

Golden was born and raised in Bedfordshire, England, and is now based in the San Francisco Bay area. 

Top illustration: Boscastle Village in Cornwall, watercolor by Dawn Hudson via Public Domain Pictures.