Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the second Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is Series – Books that are part of a series, or the name of the series itself.

These are all books I’ve enjoyed – the links to my reviews are in the titles of each book.

A is for Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie, a Poirot murder mystery.

This is set in the Middle East, where the Boyntons and Dr Gerard are travelling through the Judean desert to Petra. Also in the group are Jonathan Cope, a family friend, Sarah King, a newly qualified doctor, Lady Westholme, a member of Parliament and Miss Annabel Pierce, a former nursery governess. The beginning of the book is taken up with relating their journey to Petra and the complicated relationships between the characters. It comes to a climax when Mrs Boynton is found dead.

This is a quick, easy read, with a lot of dialogue in a relatively short book (less than 200 pages) in which Poirot, through questions, analysis and psychological reasoning, identifies the murderer.

U is for Underworld by Reginald Hill, the 10th Dalziel and Pascoe novel, set in the small mining town of Burrthorpe (a fictional town) in Yorkshire. There are two mysteries facing Dalziel and Pascoe. One is current when a man is found dead in the mine, and the other is a case that had appeared to have been resolved several years earlier, when Tracy Pedley, a young girl disappeared. Her body was never discovered.

Dalziel brings a touch of humour to the book as his down to earth approach to the miners gets more results than Pascoe’s middle class attempts to understand them.

G is for Gallows Court by Martin Edwards, the first in the Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mystery series. It’s set in London in 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist’s show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake. Daughter of a grand judge, Rachel is as glamorous as she is elusive.

U is for An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P D James, the first in the Cordelia Gray series. This is Cordelia’s first assignment on her own after the suicide of Bernie Pryde, her partner in Pryde’s Detective Agency. People assume she won’t carry on the Agency on her own as, of course, “it isn’t a suitable job for a woman”. Cordelia has other ideas and takes on an assignment from Sir Ronald Callander, a famous scientist, to investigate the death of his son, Mark who had been found hanged in suspicious circumstances. It soon becomes clear to her that this is not suicide, but something much more sinister – murder. 

S is for The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz, the second Hawthorne book. Daniel Hawthorne is an ex-policeman, now a private investigator, who the police call in to help when they have a case they call a ‘sticker’. This is a clever and a different type of murder mystery in which Horowitz, himself plays a major role, recruited by Hawthorne to write books about him and the cases he investigates. Divorce lawyer When Richard Pryce is found dead in his home, there are several clues and many suspects in this entertaining and perplexing murder mystery.

T is for Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham, the first book in the Fiona Griffiths crime thriller series. Fiona is Welsh, single and at the start of the book is aged 26, being interviewed for a job with the South Wales Police in Cardiff. Fiona does not play by the rules and when she is asked to help with the investigation of the brutal murders of Janet Mancini, a part-time prostitute, and April, Janet’s 6 year old daughter she doesn’t hesitate to use her initiative. 

But there is a problem as she has a two year gap in her CV around the time of her A Levels and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Fiona is desperate to put the past behind her but as more gruesome killings follow, the case leads her inexorably back into those dark places in her own mind.

The next link up will be on September 2, 2023 when the theme will be: From your TBR list.